Heating System; Water leaking unground/underfloor

M

Martinslan

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Called the Plumber to clear an air lock in the hot water tank located on the upstairs landing.

He did his usual investigation and then gave Mrs Martin the result.
He said "I have bad nws...serious problem ....There is a leak in the central heating system and it is somewhere downstairs. The system is losing about 1 gal. per hour. Somewhere under the floor of the house. And I can not locate it just by listening to the downstairs rads"
You need to call in a specialist....to detect the leak. Give me a call when they have found and repaired it and I will come and fix any air lock." Bye
(no charge btw)

A bit taken aback Mrs M. rang me....it is my fault, of course..
I calmed ...never heard of such a thing...good start denial...

So please help me

Q1 Has anyone ever heard of this ??
Q2 Where in Cork city do I get a leak finder specialist..??
Q3 How much will this cost ??
Q5.Do you think the insurance company will cover the trace and repair.
Q6 any other ideas / comments ?

for info ...floors downstairs are wooden and show no sign on water mark.
No does the floor in the kitchen which is tiled.

Lovely Monday... I can just see ...no pun intended ... the SSIA money going into a hole in the ground !!!
 
Take it that you don't have a combi boiler which would indicate water loss by needing to be continually topped up, or a water meter which would show water usage continuously.

We only discovered that we had a leak in our system in one of the solid floors we have downstairs when we changed to a combi.
Presumably all of your downstairs floors are solid?

Our plumber located the leak in our system by using a sort of stethoscope ( picture a metal rod, with a spike at one end and an earpiece at the other). Once he had narrowed it down to a fairly small location he chiselled out a bit of the floor at a time and found the burst pipe. Ours was just weeping and was making nothing like a gallon an hour, so yours should be relatively simple to locate.

Good luck!
 
If your system was losing a gallon per hour you would know about it very soon. What kind of downstairs floors do you have? If concrete then the waterleak @ 1 gal/hour must be very obvious? Did the plumber stop the water entering the heating system? You should check to see if he tied up the ballcock on the small tank in the attic. If he didnt then you tie it up. Get another plumber to check out the system.
 
Leaks in concrete floors can be very difficult to track down, as water may track along and appear some distance from the actual source. There are a number of companies who specialise in finding leaks, using thermal imaging equipment (AFAIK). It's not cheap but it's well worth it if you have expensive floor finishes down. Before you go to any expense it would be worth getting a plumber ( a second opinion is no harm) to rule out any obvious cause. I had problems myself years ago with serious water staining on internal walls; a plumber was unable to identify the fault so I investigated myself- a weeping gland packing on a rad valve was the culprit. I was glad to find it (a rad valve is less than a fiver) but a little cheesed off that the builder took up concrete screeds in 3 locations and found nothing!
 
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