Leak detection & pipework repair in Macclesfield
Leaks divide neatly into two kinds. The ones you can see are usually a quick fix: a failed compression joint, a perished washer, a waste trap that has worked loose. The ones you cannot see are the expensive ones, because they run for weeks into a floor void or a wall cavity before anything shows.
Finding a hidden leak properly is its own skill. It means isolating sections of pipework, watching the meter, using acoustic and thermal kit where it helps, and lifting the smallest amount of floor that will get to the problem — rather than taking up a room's worth of boards and hoping.
Macclesfield's water is soft — 45 to 68 mg/l depending on which reservoir feeds your street — which has one important consequence for pipework. Soft water is mildly plumbosolvent, so old lead supply pipes matter more here than they would in a hard-water town, and copper in older properties corrodes from the inside rather than furring up.
Leaks & pipework — every job, in detail.
10 jobs in this category. Each has its own page explaining what's involved, what your plumber checks and when it's worth calling someone out.
Leak detection
Leak detection is finding water that is escaping somewhere you cannot see — under a floor, inside a wall, above a ceiling or below a solid slab. It is done by isolating sections of pipework and watching the meter, then narrowing down with acoustic, thermal or tracer methods, so that the smallest possible amount of floor or plaster has to come up.
Read more →Pipe repair & replacement
Most leaking pipework is repaired by cutting out the failed section and jointing in new — usually within an hour once the pipe is accessible. What decides the size of the job is not the leak but the access, and whether the rest of the run is in the same condition as the bit that failed.
Read more →Leak under the sink
A puddle in the cupboard under the sink is almost always one of four things: the waste trap, the flexible tap connectors, the isolation valves, or the appliance hose. Working out which one it is takes a dry cloth and ten minutes, and the repair is usually a part costing a few pounds.
Read more →Leak through a ceiling
Water appearing on a ceiling has usually travelled some distance along a joist before it dropped, so the stain is rarely under the leak. The priority is electrical safety and stopping the flow; the diagnosis is a short list — the bath or shower seal, the WC connection, a waste joint, or a heating or supply pipe in the void.
Read more →Central heating leak
If your boiler pressure keeps dropping, the system is losing water somewhere — heating circuits are sealed, so the water has to be going out. The usual suspects are radiator valve glands, the pressure relief discharge outside, a pinhole in buried pipework, or a failed expansion vessel making the gauge behave as though there is a leak.
Read more →Hidden leak under a floor
A leak under a floor is found before it is opened up, not after. Isolation and metering narrow it to one circuit, then acoustic or thermal detection pinpoints it, and only then does anything come up. Done in that order it is one neat access hole; done the other way round it is a room full of lifted flooring.
Read more →Dripping overflow pipe
An overflow pipe that drips outside the house is not the fault — it is the warning. It means a float valve somewhere has failed and is letting water in faster than it should: usually a WC cistern, a cold water storage tank in the loft, or a feed-and-expansion tank. Replacing the valve is a small job; ignoring it wets a wall all winter.
Read more →Lead pipe replacement
Homes built after 1970 will not have lead supply pipes; homes built before it may. Replacement means running new blue MDPE from the boundary into the property and re-making the connection inside. United Utilities will renew the section from the water main to your boundary free of charge under their lead pipe scheme — the run inside your boundary is the homeowner's.
Read more →Pipe lagging & frost protection
Lagging is the cheapest job in plumbing and prevents the most expensive one. Every pipe in an unheated space — loft, cellar, garage, outbuilding, the run to an outside tap — wants insulating, along with the loft tank. The one place you never insulate is underneath a loft tank, because the warmth rising from the house below is what keeps it from freezing.
Read more →Whole-house repiping
Repiping is for houses where patching has stopped making sense — repeated leaks, a mix of lead, iron, imperial copper and plastic joined together over decades, or a renovation that has the floors up anyway. It is disruptive, and it is the one plumbing job that is dramatically cheaper done alongside other building work than on its own.
Read more →Not sure which one you need?
Describe it in your own words on the quote form. Your plumber will work out what the job actually is when they ring you back — usually the same day.
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