Does every leak detection company offer no find, no fee?

No. As at 19 September 2026, ADI Leak Detection publishes an outcome guarantee with four conditions, while 0800 Homefix publishes none on its leak detection, trace and access or rates pages and charges from the point of arrival. Several firms publish a twelve-month workmanship guarantee instead, which is a different promise.

What are the conditions on ADI’s no find, no fee?

As published on their FAQ page and checked on 19 September 2026: it applies to a single leak at an individual property on hot and cold feed plumbing, the leak must be losing at least half a litre of water per minute, it applies to water mains up to 30 metres long, and it is not applicable to central heating, structural or swimming pool leaks.

Is a twelve-month guarantee the same as no find, no fee?

No. A workmanship guarantee means they return if the repair fails. An outcome guarantee means you are not charged if the search fails. The first says nothing about what happens when nobody finds your leak.

What conditions apply to your no find, no fee?

One. If we do not find the leak, you do not pay for the time we spent looking. There is no flow-rate threshold, no pipe-length cap and no exclusion for central heating. It covers the search, not the repair or the making good afterwards.

Should I pay a higher rate to get a guarantee?

Only if the search has a real chance of failing, which is precisely what you cannot judge before it starts. On a visible leak the guarantee will never trigger and you should be comparing on repair and reinstatement instead.

No Find, No Fee at Four Firms: the Conditions Matter More

Only some London leak firms publish an outcome guarantee at all, and where one exists the conditions decide whether it will ever apply to you: one national specialist limits it to mains and mains-fed plumbing, requires a measured loss of at least half a litre per minute, caps mains runs at 30 metres and excludes central heating, structural and swimming pool leaks. A twelve-month workmanship guarantee is a different product entirely.

Leak Fix LondonLast updated 19 September 2026

Thermal imaging survey being carried out to trace a hidden leak

Two guarantees that get confused constantly

Almost every firm in this trade publishes a guarantee. Very few publish the same one, and the two most common are not alternatives to each other.

	An outcome guarantee	A workmanship guarantee
What it promises	You are not charged if the search fails	If the repair fails, they come back
When it pays out	Before anything is fixed	After something is fixed
Typical name	No find, no fee	12-month guarantee
Protects you from	Paying for an afternoon that answered nothing	Paying twice for the same repair

You can hold both, one, or neither, and the marketing rarely distinguishes them. A firm that says "guaranteed" on its leak detection page is very often talking about the second one.

What is actually published, firm by firm

ADI Leak Detection: offered, with four published conditions

ADI's FAQ answers the question directly — yes, on water mains and internal mains-fed water supply pipes — and then sets out the conditions. As published, and all four matter:

It applies to investigations for a single leak at an individual property, on hot and cold feed plumbing.
The leak must be losing at least half a litre of water per minute.
It applies to water mains up to 30 metres long.
It is not applicable to central heating, structural or swimming pool leaks.

Read those against the leaks people actually ring about. A boiler losing pressure weekly is a central heating leak. Damp tracking down a party wall with no measurable loss on the mains is a structural investigation. A pinhole weeping into screed does not lose half a litre a minute, or you would know about it in a very different way. The guarantee is real and it is published in plain terms, which is more than most; it is also narrower than the phrase suggests, and the narrowness is the point of reading it.

0800 Homefix: not offered

No no-find-no-fee guarantee appears on their leak detection page, their trace and access page or their rates page, and their own copy states that they charge in half-hour increments from the point of arrival. Their trace and access page describes the price being agreed before starting, with no outcome condition attached. They do publish a twelve-month guarantee on all repair work: if the same fault returns within that period, they return and fix it at no extra cost.

That is a clear, internally consistent position. You are buying time, the time is charged whatever it yields, and the repair is warranted for a year. Nothing about it is hidden.

Aspect: a workmanship guarantee, published

Aspect's terms state that the company undertakes to repair or make good any defect in completed work which appears within twelve months of completion, subject to stated exclusions, and their leak detection page describes the Aspect Guarantee as covering workmanship for up to twelve months. Their published charging model for leak detection is from £54.00 plus VAT per half hour with a one-hour minimum, with charges beyond that made by the half hour rounded up.

So: a workmanship guarantee, published clearly, and time charged by the half hour. If you want an outcome guarantee from them, that is a question to ask directly and get answered in writing, because it is not what the twelve-month guarantee is.

Dyno-Rod and Metro Rod: workmanship guarantees of very different lengths

Dyno-Rod publishes a three-month guarantee across its prices and emergency plumbing pages. Metro Rod's terms are more granular: installation services are warranted free from defects for twelve months, plumbing materials for twelve months, and blockage clearing work is rectified free for 28 days.

Three months, 28 days and twelve months are three different promises, and a leak repair that fails in month four sits outside two of them. This is exactly the kind of detail that is dull to read before booking and expensive to discover afterwards.

Ours: one condition

If we do not find the leak, you do not pay for the time we spent looking. There is no minimum flow rate, no cap on pipe length, no exclusion for central heating, and no restriction to mains-fed plumbing. The rate is £150 per hour and the guarantee applies to the search.

It is not a free visit and it is not a cap on the bill, and we would rather say that here than have you find out later. What it is not covering is set out in detail in what no find, no fee actually means.

Why the conditions exist, and why they are not unreasonable

It is tempting to read a list of exclusions as a firm arranging never to pay. It is more usefully read as a firm working out which searches it is confident of winning.

A minimum flow rate exists because a leak losing half a litre a minute makes a noise and moves a meter, and one losing a teaspoon an hour may be genuinely unlocatable on the day. A 30-metre cap on mains exists because acoustic correlation gets harder with distance. Excluding central heating exists because a low-pressure circuit is quieter than a pressurised main and often needs draining and gassing before it gives anything up. Every one of those conditions is a statement about where detection gets hard, and they are accurate.

Which is also why they matter to you. The conditions carve out precisely the jobs where a search is most likely to fail, and those are the jobs you most wanted the guarantee for. A guarantee that applies everywhere except the hard cases is not dishonest. It is just worth less than it reads.

What counts as found

A location specific enough to open one place and repair it: a room, a wall and a height, or a pipe run and a point on it. "Somewhere under the kitchen floor" is not a find. Establish whose definition governs before the visit, because on a disputed job that sentence is the whole argument.

There is also a case that trips people up in both directions. A meter turning with everything off is quite often a passing toilet valve, a garden tap cracked open or a neighbour on a shared supply. Identifying that is a find: you have the answer you paid for, and the time is chargeable. An outcome guarantee protects you from a search that ends with nothing, not from being told something you were not expecting.

The five things to establish about any guarantee

Which of the two guarantees is it? Outcome or workmanship. Ask in those words.
What is excluded? ADI publishes its exclusions openly, which makes them checkable. A firm that cannot list its exclusions has not written them down.
Is there a measurable threshold? A guarantee conditional on a flow rate you cannot verify at the time of booking is a guarantee you may not be able to claim.
Who decides whether the leak was found? If the answer is the attending engineer, verbally, on the day, the wording is doing no work. A written report stating what was tested, what was excluded and what was located is what makes it checkable.
Is it in the booking confirmation? Described on a call and absent from the email is not a term.

When the firm without a guarantee is the right call

An outcome guarantee is worth most on the jobs most likely to fail, and least on the jobs that cannot. If the leak is visible, or a pressure test will settle it in twenty minutes, you are paying attention to a term that will never be triggered. Pick on availability, on whether they repair as well as detect, and on whether anyone puts the floor back.

It is also worth being straight about scale. If you need someone at 4am on a bank holiday, a national operator with a staffed contact centre is a genuinely better answer than a guarantee from a firm whose phone rings out. Aspect, Metro Rod and Dyno-Rod all publish round-the-clock availability. A guarantee you cannot invoke because nobody came is worth nothing.

Before you book anyone

Prove the leak first. Everything off, read the meter, wait an hour, read again. If it has not moved, the water is not coming from the pressurised supply and no detection guarantee is relevant.
Check whether it is even your leak. Water from the flat above is the upstairs leaseholder's insurer. Water past the boundary stopcock is the water company's.
Ask who repairs and who reinstates. Those are separate questions from the guarantee, and covered in reinstatement.

Frequently asked

Does every leak detection company offer no find, no fee?: No. As at 19 September 2026, ADI Leak Detection publishes an outcome guarantee with four conditions, while 0800 Homefix publishes none on its leak detection, trace and access or rates pages and charges from the point of arrival. Several firms publish a twelve-month workmanship guarantee instead, which is a different promise.
What are the conditions on ADI’s no find, no fee?: As published on their FAQ page and checked on 19 September 2026: it applies to a single leak at an individual property on hot and cold feed plumbing, the leak must be losing at least half a litre of water per minute, it applies to water mains up to 30 metres long, and it is not applicable to central heating, structural or swimming pool leaks.
Is a twelve-month guarantee the same as no find, no fee?: No. A workmanship guarantee means they return if the repair fails. An outcome guarantee means you are not charged if the search fails. The first says nothing about what happens when nobody finds your leak.
What conditions apply to your no find, no fee?: One. If we do not find the leak, you do not pay for the time we spent looking. There is no flow-rate threshold, no pipe-length cap and no exclusion for central heating. It covers the search, not the repair or the making good afterwards.
Should I pay a higher rate to get a guarantee?: Only if the search has a real chance of failing, which is precisely what you cannot judge before it starts. On a visible leak the guarantee will never trigger and you should be comparing on repair and reinstatement instead.

Sources

No find, no fee · £150 per hour. The rate is fixed before we attend and does not rise for a difficult property, an awkward access or an evening visit. The total depends on how long the job takes; the rate cannot change.