Leak Detection in Camden and Kentish Town

Camden Town, Kentish Town and Primrose Hill are Georgian and Victorian terraces and stucco villas, most of them long since divided into flats, with large post-war estates at Gospel Oak and Somers Town and new-build blocks around King's Cross and the canal. Dartmouth Park and Tufnell Park have bigger Victorian houses, often with a basement flat. In the converted houses a single stack of bathrooms may serve four flats, and heating pipes run through a hallway floor shared by all of them, so the stain and the leak are rarely in the same room.

We cover NW1 and NW5, including Camden Town, Kentish Town, Primrose Hill, Gospel Oak, Dartmouth Park, Somers Town and the Regent's Park side of NW1. Calls come from leaseholders, landlords and managing agents with a stain on a ceiling, a damp hallway wall or a communal heating system losing pressure. Thermal imaging in the hall and on the stairs shows which pipe run is warm and wet. Dye tests sort out bathroom fittings between flats, and tracer gas finds a pinhole in a heating circuit that has been drained for the test.

Camden is permit controlled throughout, with short-stay bays on most streets, so we plan the visit around that, and the equipment comes in on a trolley that copes with a basement stair. The estates and the new blocks usually need the concierge or the estate office to book us in. Every survey ends with a written report with photographs, thermal images and readings, with detection, access and repair kept separate, prepared for a trace and access claim and for the managing agent.