The first hour
Everything in a water leak claim gets harder with time. Water dries, stains fade into the plaster, ceilings get taken down, and the date you first noticed a damp patch turns into "sometime in the spring". The evidence that decides the claim mostly exists in the first hour and mostly does not survive the first week.
Do these in this order.
- Make it safe. If water is near a consumer unit, lights or sockets, turn the electricity off at the board. If a ceiling is bulging, stay out from under it. Nothing below is worth an injury.
- Turn the water off. Internal stop tap first, usually under the kitchen sink or in a hall cupboard. If that does not stop it, the external stopcock at the boundary. If the leak is on heating rather than mains, turning the boiler off and closing the radiator valves either side of the affected run does more.
- Photograph before you touch anything. Wide shot of the room, then closer, then detail. Put something recognisable in frame for scale.
- Read the water meter and photograph the dial with the reading legible.
- Write the date and time down. Then start mopping.
What to photograph, specifically
- Standing water, before it is cleared. This is the shot nobody has. Once it is mopped, all that is left is a stain and an argument about how much water there was.
- The ceiling from below, and the same area from above if you can get to the floor above safely.
- The full room, so the extent is visible. Close-ups of damp patches with no context are impossible to place later.
- Anything damaged, individually. Furniture, flooring, skirting, appliances, boxes in a cupboard. Contents and buildings are settled separately and a single wide shot will not carry the contents half.
- The source, if you can see it. A split hose, a weeping joint, a cracked waste. Hold a phone torch beside it so the water is visible rather than just the fitting.
- The meter, the stop tap position, and the boiler pressure gauge if heating is involved.
Use your phone's normal camera so the files keep their timestamps, and do not crop or edit the originals. Copy them somewhere off the phone the same day.
The meter, if the leak might be on the supply
A water meter is the cheapest evidence there is and the only thing that turns "I think we have a leak" into a rate of loss. Turn off every tap and appliance, photograph the meter, leave it an hour with nothing using water, photograph it again. Movement with everything off is a leak on your side of the meter.
Do it again with the internal stop tap closed. If the meter still moves, the loss is between the boundary and the house, on the supply pipe you are responsible for. If it stops, the loss is inside. Water bills and meters goes through the readings in more detail, and Thames Water covers what the water company will and will not do about the pipe outside.
The timeline document
Open a note on the day and keep adding to it. One line per event, each with a date:
| Date | Entry |
|---|
| First noticed | The honest earliest date you saw any symptom at all, including the one you dismissed |
| What the symptom was | Damp patch, smell, sound of running water, bill increase, boiler pressure dropping |
| Action taken | Water off, contents moved, dehumidifier hired, neighbour informed |
| Who was contacted | Insurer, managing agent, freeholder, neighbour, plumber — with times and names |
| Who attended | Name, company, date, what they did and what they said |
This matters more than it sounds. The insurer's question is whether you acted reasonably once you knew, and a contemporaneous list of dates answers it flatly. The Financial Ombudsman's guidance to insurers on gradual damage turns on whether the customer "made the insurance claim, or took reasonable action, as soon as they could reasonably have known about the problem". A timeline written on the day is the evidence of that; a recollection given eight weeks later is not.
What not to do
- Do not strip out. Pulling down a soaked ceiling or lifting a floor before anyone has seen it destroys the record of how far the water travelled. Dry it, ventilate it, prop it if it is sagging, but leave it in place.
- Do not throw damaged items away. Photograph everything, then keep it, or at minimum keep a piece of it. A binned rug is a rug that never existed.
- Do not dispose of the failed part. If a plumber cuts out a split pipe or a failed flexi, keep it in a bag.
- Do not decorate over it. Repainting a stained ceiling before the claim is settled removes the damage you are claiming for.
- Do not start a repair the insurer has not agreed, beyond the emergency work needed to stop the water and prevent it getting worse. Emergency mitigation is expected. Reinstatement before agreement usually is not covered.
If the water is coming from another flat
Document your side exactly as above, then tell three people the same day: the neighbour, the freeholder or managing agent, and your insurer. The Leasehold Advisory Service, on water leaks in leasehold flats, advises contacting the relevant people as soon as possible, which "helps you meet your obligation to take reasonable steps to deal with the leak", and getting proof of the cause such as "photographs, or a report from a builder or plumber", because "you may need this for an insurance claim or if there's a disagreement".
Keep those messages. An email to a managing agent on day one is worth more than three phone calls nobody logged. Who pays for a leak from the flat above covers where it goes next.
When to stop documenting and call someone
Documentation is not detection. If you cannot see where the water is coming from, if the meter moves with everything off, if a ceiling is wet and the bathroom above is dry, or if boiler pressure keeps dropping with nothing visible anywhere, the source is inside the structure and photographs will not find it. That is a trace and access visit, charged at our hourly rate with no fee if we do not find it, and the report that comes out of it is the document the claim is built on.
