There are water carrying pipes everywhere in your home, which can cause hidden water leaks. From the mains water outside the house to your interior stopcock, hot and cold water pipes to basin taps, toilets, showers, boilers, washing machines, dishwashers and outside taps, pipes to the hot water cylinder, central heating pipes all around the house, waste pipes from sinks, baths, showers, often tanks in the loft.
Most of the time, water stays in the pipes and everything is fine and just as it should be.
Occasionally, however, a pipe corrodes causing a pinprick hole or one of the many joints in the water carrying pipes starts to fail and hidden water leaks start to damage the property.
If it’s a big hole and lots of water comes out it’s a flood and the cause is usually very obvious and quite straightforward to fix. A nasty surprise but with a straightforward remedy.
If it’s a small hole, however, very little water escapes and you often don’t know that it’s even there; water continues to escape from the pipe into the surrounding wall or floor, maybe only one small drop an hour or so, but it continues to escape … day by day … week by week …
There are water carrying pipes everywhere you look – the mains water from outside the house to your interior stopcock, hot and cold water pipes to basin taps, toilets, showers, boilers, washing machines, dishwashers and outside taps, pipes to the hot water cylinder, central heating pipes all around the house, waste pipes from sinks, baths, showers, often tanks in the loft.
Most of the time, water stays in the pipes and everything is fine and just as it should be.
It doesn’t stay in one place – moisture spreads, in all directions and can spread, slowly even stealthily, through the entire house until, one day, you notice something isn’t quite right …
Maybe there’s a small damp stain above a skirting board somewhere that you had never noticed before or an unexplained musty smell in a bedroom or a small area of mould in the utility room that keeps reappearing however many times you scrub it or you have to keep topping up the central heating system more and more often.
It’s only then that you begin to suspect you may have a hidden water leak somewhere … You may think, "Life is busy, it’s not a big problem and, anyway, maybe it will go away on its own".
Only … it doesn’t; in fact, it slowly gets worse …
You give Trace and Access Experts a call. They come out to you and find the leak using their specialist equipment. Once found, the leak is easy to fix. Job done.
Except hidden water leaks cause unseen problems
Large areas of the house are damp; not just where you originally noticed a problem but in lots of places and lots of rooms. The damp has made the bottom of plasterboard walls go soggy, there’s mould under all the laminate flooring, some of the floor tiles in the kitchen are moving slightly when you walk on them, there’s mould on the walls in the corner of the living room behind the TV, some of the internal doors have warped slightly and don’t close properly …
It’s a big problem to sort out. It’s disruptive and stressful. Floor coverings have to come up, specialist drying equipment needs to be installed, it takes months before everything’s back to normal.
“Life’s too short to put up with such a hassle”
It’s a cautionary tale. Don’t leave it too late – if in doubt, give Trace and Access Experts a call sooner rather than (much) later. We’re here to help with those hidden water leaks
