About Leak Fix London

Nearly every leak specialist in London sells you the first third of a job. They arrive with a thermal camera, mark a spot on your floor, hand you a report and invoice you for the visit. You are then left holding a wet kitchen and two more firms to find: a plumber to open the floor and repair the pipe, and a builder to close it back up. Each one turns up on a different day, and each one blames the last if the leak is still there.

We do all three. We trace the leak, we carry out the pipework repair in copper, MDPE, push-fit or lead, and our own handymen and builders put back what had to be opened: screed, flooring, plaster, ceilings, tiling and decoration. One firm holds the job from the first moisture reading to the last coat of paint, which means there is nobody to point at when something is not right.

Every detection visit ends in a written leak detection report, dated, setting out the method used, what was found and where: thermal images, moisture readings and pressure test results. It is written to be accepted for a trace and access claim, because most of the people who call us are going to have to show it to an insurer.

The people who attend are London plumbers of fifteen years, and for most of that time they worked as sole traders: one van, one name, word of mouth, and whatever the day put in front of them. Leaks were the jobs that kept coming back and the ones nobody else wanted, because they are slow, they are diagnostic and they end in somebody's floor being opened.

Leak Fix London is the company that work turned into. The reason for forming it was the hand-off: as a sole-trader plumber you repair the pipe and then watch the customer chase a builder for the floor and a decorator for the ceiling, and hear from them again weeks later when the three trades have not agreed. Putting the detection, the plumbing and the building work under one name was the only way to own the whole job rather than the middle of it.

The rate is settled before anyone gets in a van, and it is the same rate for a straightforward flat and an awkward Victorian conversion with the pipework buried in screed. Detection runs from the cheapest, least invasive method upwards: we confirm a loss is real before we start hunting for it, and we do not open a floor to look for something we have not first narrowed down from the surface.

What changes is how long that takes. A weeping compression joint under a sink is found in minutes. A pinhole on a 15mm heating run under a concrete floor can take a pressure test, a thermal sweep and then tracer gas before it gives up its position. You are told where we are before each hour begins, and whether the next one is worth spending.

A fair number of the calls we take are not leaks, and we would rather tell you that on the phone than on an invoice. Water pooling at the base of a shower tray with a dry ceiling below is usually failed sealant or grout, and it is a tube of silicone and an afternoon, not a detection visit. A patch of black mould in a cold corner of a bedroom, with no plumbing in that wall, is almost always condensation: a ventilation and heating problem. A cistern that hisses and a toilet that trickles into the pan is a worn flush valve, which any plumber can swap.

Some problems are not ours to charge you for either. A leak out in the street or on the public side of the boundary stopcock may well be the water company's to fix rather than yours, and that is worth establishing with them before you pay anybody to dig. If water is coming down from the flat above, the repair usually sits with the flat above or with the building, so the first calls are to that neighbour and to the freeholder or managing agent. If you can smell gas, stop reading and call the National Gas Emergency Service.

We also do not do drainage unblocking, roofing or damp-proofing, and we will say so rather than take the visit.