Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
How to find a leaking pipe?
It looks like we've a leaking pipe somewhere that is slowly damaging our and the neighbours house. The kitchen floor tiles at ours have cracked across several tiles at one place so we thought something must be going on down there and now we've just heard from the neighbours that they have a serious damp problem on their side of the wall next to our kitchen and their floor by that.
They had a builder round who stripped it all back and could see all the damp in the wall and rotten floor but no pipes so they think its from our house. The builder came and made a some quite big holes in our wall and kitchen floor and can see it is damp but we couldn't find and pipe that were obviously leaking. That builder has now said its too much for him and has packed up and left, leaving us with a bunch of holes in our kitchen.
He suggested we needed some sort of specialist with electronic detectors and cameras on bendy stick types of things. Does anyone know of anyone who does that type of thing or have any ideas on how we could find the leak?
Tags for Forum Posts: damp-specialist
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on
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Ant, if this dampness is towards the front or back wall of your house, check that water isn't coming through your external brickwork from a crack in a rainwater downpipe. I know you said it is appearing at or near kitchen floor level by a party wall. We had this sort of problem in the front corner of our living room, affecting both our and our neighbour's front walls and party wall. It took us the better part of a year to diagnose the problem: a half-inch crack in our shared cast-iron downpipe at first floor level. After a heavy downpour water spewed into the brickwork through damaged pointing concealed behind the pipe, then made its way down to groundfloor level through the brickwork and behind the plaster. It just might be similar - if you have a downpipe nearby and if you notice the problem is worse soon after rain.
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Permalink Reply by DrWhams on
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I'd echo that advice -- we had some significant damp patches on the walls when we moved into our house due to blocked gutters. If it rains in the next couple of days then stand outside and watch for drips from the gutter or water running down the outside of the drainpipe. If you haven't had the gutters cleaned for years then that could be a contributing factor.
You could also buy a cheap damp meter which might at least help you identify the damp zones in a wall. They start a tenner and will give you more information before deciding whether you need to call in a damp specialist rather than a builder or plumber. eg see these
In the meantime, another technique which may or may not be useful is an old trick a plumber once showed me for finding leaking pipes (or damp tiles in your case): with totally dry hands, tear off some sheets of toilet paper and run them down the back of the pipes. If there's any moisture there then you'll see it.
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Permalink Reply by ant on
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Thanks Neil, Martin is coming to have a look, he seemed competent and and reasonably priced compared to others I talked to today. He sounded pleased to hear you'd been recommending him here.
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Its not near the front or back, its about the middle of the rear extension. That is about where the chimney breast used to be though, which has been removed in both our houses, could water be leaking in there from the roof and somehow getting all the way to the ground before its showing up as wet patches?
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Permalink Reply by Christopher Fowler on
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Ant - one of the problems with water leakages, whether it is from outside, through cracks in the wall or through the roof tiles, or from a leaky pipe, is that water can travel a long way from the point of entry to the point where it becomes visible to the home owner. It can, for example, travel a long way across a ceiling before it finds a crack or hole in the plaster/plasterboard. And with damp patches on a wall, it can also travel up, by osmosis, as well as what you would expect, travelling down or horizontally. I'd recommend from my own experience getting an expert in to assess the problem, and as soon as possible. If you have an area, especially where there is wood, that gets damp, and then dries out, and so on, it can promote the emergence of dry rot, which is a really nasty problem to treat (as I know to my considerable cost). I'm sorry to sound so "doomy", but water penetration is one of the most serious problems that a home can face, and delay only makes it worse. Good luck with this.
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To start with if you have a meter outside you house turn off all known water outlets in the house and see if the meter keeps moving.
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Thanks thats a good idea, trying it now. If its just a slow drip it might take quite a while to get the meter dial to change but i'll see if anything happens over today.
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I have friends that were having problems with damp, near where a chimney breast had been removed, for ages. They went through every theory but in the end it turned out to be a tiny leak on a lead pipe about 6m away. It must have been leaking for years but it was just a fluke that they found it when they did.
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Just as an FYI followup on this - Martin the damp guy came around and has just sent his report. The main bit in that said this:
When a chimney breast is removed and there is no provision for damp/waterproofing there is always a risk from rising dampness from below ground and the hearth slab because chimney breasts where not built with a Damp Proof Course (DPC), as this was not necessary if they were used as an open fireplace.
It may be that before this chimney breast was removed that prolonged rainwater ingress has permeated the chimney flue/party wall and was not dealt with adequately at the time of removal.
It is our view that the cause of the dampness here is historic/residual rather than current.It then goes on to say how to fix it with a cementitious Waterproofing system, basically just cover the area with render with a waterproofing agent added with the cement.
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