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Charlie asks the right questions
Is the boiler losing pressure, does the meter creep with the taps off, where is the damp and when did it start. He also asks about listing and recent works, and plans the visit around them.
Leak detection in Lavenham
Charlie traces water and heating leaks in Lavenham's timber framed, listed and modern houses alike, and nothing is cut, lifted or dug.
No find, no fee
Non-invasive, every time
Insurance ready written report
Tell us what you have noticed and where. We ring you back to talk it through. No find, no fee.
No find, no fee
24/7 enquiries
Non-invasive methods
Reports for insurance claims
There is nowhere else in Suffolk with as many timber framed houses standing together as Lavenham, and most of them are listed. That changes how a leak has to be found. Lifting a floor or cutting into a wall needs consent, so the search has to be kept to the smallest possible area, and the only opening made is the one the repair needs.
Lavenham is on Anglian Water. The supply pipe from the stop tap into the house is the owner's. A house fronting straight onto Water Street may have a short one, while a house set back behind a yard can have a long run of unknown age under brick paving. Heating here has usually been added in sections.
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Is the boiler losing pressure, does the meter creep with the taps off, where is the damp and when did it start. He also asks about listing and recent works, and plans the visit around them.
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Meter and pressure tests say whether it is supply or heating. Thermal imaging of the floors and walls then shows the pipe routes and the wet or warm patch that does not belong.
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Acoustic listening on a pressurised pipe, or tracer gas on a drained one, brings it down to inches. Charlie marks the floor or wall, photographs it, and explains what a repairer will need to open.
Lime plaster, wattle and daub and old brick all show temperature differences clearly. The camera picks out a warm heating pipe behind a wall or a cold damp area under boards without touching the fabric.
A leaking supply pipe under a brick yard or a flagstone passage makes a sound the ground microphone can follow. Our engineer works along the route and the loudest reading marks the spot.
On a heating pipe set into a concrete kitchen floor, the circuit is drained and filled with a safe hydrogen mix. The gas rises through the slab at the leak and a detector finds where it comes out.
A listed house off the market place had a damp patch on a lime plastered wall, and the owner was anxious about opening it up. The heating lost pressure on test, and the thermal camera traced a pipe chased into the wall by a previous owner to a joint behind the plaster. The repair needed one hand sized opening, made good in lime. A house set back behind a brick paved yard had a meter that would not stop; the ground microphone followed the supply pipe under the bricks to a corroded section near the gate, and a few bricks came up and went back. A holiday let had water on a ceiling between guests, which was a bath waste.
Long Melford and Sudbury are a few minutes down the hill, Hadleigh is east along the same lanes, and Bury St Edmunds is a short run north.
Trace and access cover, which most buildings policies include, pays to find the leak and to put right whatever has to be disturbed to fix it. In a listed building that reinstatement can be the larger cost, so the report matters. The write up gives the method, the images, the readings and the marked position.
Only in a good way. Nothing we do disturbs the building, so no consent is needed for the detection itself. We mark the exact point of the leak, which keeps any later opening up to the minimum a conservation officer would expect.
Then you pay nothing for the detection. If the meter stays still and the heating holds pressure, the pipes are sound and we say so, rather than searching for a leak that is not there. In an old Lavenham house the damp is sometimes a blocked gutter, a failed patch of render or condensation on a cold wall, and we will point you towards the likely cause.
Almost always, yes. A sealed heating system that loses pressure is losing water somewhere, and in an old Lavenham house it is usually a pipe under a floor rather than a visible radiator. A pressure test confirms it.
Yes. Acoustic listening works through brick, flagstones and tarmac. We mark the loudest point, so the repairer lifts a few bricks and relays them afterwards rather than digging a trench.
Often. Many houses here are let and the owner is not always on site. We can arrange access with a keyholder, work between guests, and email the report to the owner the same day.
Phone 07897 020 680 and we will book the next slot.
Landline 01440 840 772. Email hello@completeleakdetection.co.uk.