Leak Detection in Ealing and Acton

Ealing and Ealing Common have big late Victorian and Edwardian houses with cellars, long pipe runs and several bathrooms, a great many now divided into flats. West Ealing and Northfields are Edwardian terraces on suspended timber floors. Acton ranges from Victorian terraces in Acton Central and Poets Corner to post-war estates in South Acton and new apartment blocks near the stations and Park Royal. In the conversions the problems are stacked bathrooms and shared stacks. In the terraces it is old copper under the floor. In the new blocks it is plastic pipework behind plasterboard.

We cover W5, W3 and W13. The typical calls are a stain on a ceiling below another flat, a damp patch at the base of a wall, a boiler losing pressure and a water bill that has jumped. Thermal imaging shows the warm path of a heating leak through floorboards and plaster. Tracer gas finds pinholes in pipework that will not hold pressure. Dye tests and moisture readings settle which bathroom is responsible in a conversion. For supply pipes under front gardens and side passages the acoustic ground microphone locates the leak from the surface.

Almost all of Ealing and Acton is permit controlled, so we plan the visit around the zone and bring the equipment in on a trolley. In a converted house we keep to the flat and the rooms below it, and leave the common parts clear and clean. A survey of a converted house usually takes between two and four hours. The written report with photographs, thermal images and readings is prepared for a trace and access claim on your buildings insurance and makes clear whose pipe is leaking.