The honest answer is that the pipe repair is rarely the expensive part. Cutting out a failed joint and fitting a new one is a short job. What moves the bill from a hundred pounds to several hundred, or more, is how long it takes to find the leak and how much of the house has to be opened and then put back to reach it.
Every leak repair bill has three parts
Whoever you call, the invoice is built from the same three pieces. Knowing which of them your leak needs is the quickest way to judge whether a quote is reasonable.
- Finding it. Free if you can see water coming out of a fitting. Hours if the only evidence is a stain, a turning meter or a boiler that keeps losing pressure.
- Fixing it. The labour to isolate, drain, cut out and replace the failed section, plus the parts. On most domestic leaks this is the smallest and most predictable of the three.
- Making good. Refitting the bath panel, re-boarding and skimming the ceiling, relaying the tiles, patching the screed. Often quoted separately, often by a different trade, and often forgotten until the plumber has gone.
A quote that only covers the second part is not a cheap quote. It is an incomplete one.
What the market publishes
These are published UK ranges from named cost guides. They are not our prices and they are not a quote for your property. Which? notes that London and the South East sit at the upper end of national scales.
| Item | Published figure | Source |
|---|
| Repairing a burst water pipe, labour and materials, excluding VAT | £100 to £500 | Which?, plumber cost guide |
| Standard hourly rate for a plumber at your home | £40 to £60 per hour | Checkatrade cost guide, 2026 |
| Emergency call-out fee, before labour | £100 to £120 | Checkatrade cost guide, 2026 |
| Water leak detection, typical range | £115 to £234 | Checkatrade cost guide, 2026 |
| Water leak detection, full published range | £80 to £1,600 | Checkatrade cost guide, 2026 |
Read those two lines about detection together with the repair figure. For a hidden leak, the cost of finding it can match or exceed the cost of fixing it, which is why a low repair price on its own tells you very little. There is more on how the finding part is charged in leak detection cost in London.
What decides the cost, leak by leak
A leak you can see at a fitting
A weeping compression nut under the sink, a dripping isolation valve, a leaking washing machine hose connection. No finding, a short repair and nothing to reinstate. This is the cheapest leak there is, and some of it you can deal with yourself; our page on a leaking pipe under the sink covers which joints are worth a spanner and which are not.
A radiator or valve
A leaking valve spindle, a weeping tail or a radiator that has rusted through. The cost turns on whether the valve can be repacked or has to be replaced, and replacing one usually means draining down part of the heating system and refilling and bleeding it afterwards. See radiator leaking from the valve for how to tell which you have.
Behind a bath panel or shower tray
Access is easy if the panel comes off, harder if the tray is tiled in. The question that decides the cost is whether the leak is on the supply pipework, the waste, or the seal between tray and wall, because those are three different repairs and only one of them is a pipe.
Through the ceiling from the room above
Now all three parts are on the bill. The source has to be confirmed upstairs, the pipe repaired, and the ceiling below dried, cut back, re-boarded and finished. A ceiling that has held water for a while may need more than a patch.
Buried in a wall, under a floor or in screed
The expensive end. The pipe cannot be seen, so it has to be traced before anything is opened, and every square metre of tile or screed lifted in the wrong place is money spent on nothing. This is where good detection saves more than it costs.
Outside, on the supply pipe
If your meter turns with the internal stopcock shut, the leak is probably on the pipe between the boundary and the house. That section is usually the owner's, and the cost depends heavily on depth, length and what is on top of it. Check who is responsible before you pay anyone: water leak outside the house: who is responsible.
Repair or replace?
A single failed joint on otherwise sound pipe is a repair. The case for replacing a length of pipe instead is when the same run has already failed, when the pipe itself is the problem rather than one fitting, or when the section is buried and you would rather not open the same floor twice.
- Copper with pinholes. One pinhole is often the first of several along the same stretch. Patching it is cheap today and expensive over five years.
- Push-fit that has let go. Usually the fitting was not fully seated or the pipe was cut badly, and remaking it correctly is enough. Several failures on the same installation is a different conversation.
- Old lead or galvanised supply pipe. These are replaced, not patched.
We will tell you plainly when patching a run again is throwing money at it. If you want the background on why pipes fail the way they do, read copper pipe pinhole leaks and push-fit plumbing failures. Replacement work is covered on our pipework repair and replacement page.
Making good: the part most quotes leave out
If a floor has come up or a ceiling has come down, someone has to put it back. Many plumbers stop at the pipe and leave you to find a plasterer, a tiler or a flooring fitter, which means a second set of call-outs, a gap of days or weeks with a hole in the room, and nobody who owns the whole job if the finish is wrong.
When you compare quotes, ask each firm the same question: does this price leave the room the way it was before, or does it leave a repaired pipe in an open wall? We do the reinstatement ourselves with our own handymen and builders, which is the point of leak damage repair and reinstatement.
Will insurance pay for the repair?
Often for the damage, less often for the pipe. Most home policies separate the water damage from the item that failed. Some exclude the pipe or fitting itself where it failed through wear and tear; Homeprotect instead publishes a £250 per claim limit for repairing the cause of the leak, such as replacing a broken pipe or a faulty valve.
Trace and access cover is different again. It pays towards finding a hidden leak and opening up to reach it, and Admiral publishes limits of £5,000 on its standard and Gold policies and £10,000 on Platinum, but states it does not cover repairing the source of the leak. So the finding and the opening may be covered while the repair itself is yours. Our guide to what trace and access pays for goes through the edges, and is plumbing covered by home insurance covers the wording to look for in your schedule.
Five ways to keep the bill down
- Stop the water first. Every hour a leak runs adds to the making-good. Turn off the stopcock or the isolation valve, and if the pipe is still dripping, a temporary fix buys you time to get a proper repair booked rather than an emergency one.
- Photograph everything before anyone arrives. Stains, the meter reading, where water is appearing. It speeds the diagnosis and it is what an insurer will ask for.
- Do the meter test. Read the meter, leave every tap and appliance off for an hour, read it again. If it moved, tell whoever you call. It narrows the search before they arrive.
- Clear the access. Empty the cupboard under the sink, the airing cupboard, the space around the bath panel. Paid time spent moving boxes is paid time.
- Ask what happens after the pipe is fixed. A quote that includes making good is usually cheaper than two separate firms.
What we charge
One rate: £150 per hour, fixed before we attend. It does not rise for an awkward property, a difficult access or an evening visit, and there is no separate call-out fee. The total depends on how long the job takes, which is why we ask the questions above on the phone and tell you what we expect before we set off.
On a house, a multi-bathroom property or a job we can scope on the phone, we will quote a fixed price for the detection instead of the hourly rate. If we do not find the leak, you do not pay for the time we spent looking. Materials for the repair are quoted before we fit them, and parking or congestion charges are passed on at cost where they apply.
The difference with us is that finding, fixing and making good come from one firm, so you get one price conversation and one team responsible for the whole job. If you have a leak now, book an engineer or call us, and we will tell you on the phone which of the three parts your leak is likely to need. For the full service, see water leak repair.
