What our promise covers
No find, no fee leak detection is a promise about one charge: the cost of finding the leak. Ours is written into our terms, and it applies to homes. No find, no fee on home water leaks covers one leak on a water main up to 30 m or the hot and cold supply pipes, at least half a litre a minute, where we also carry out the access and repair.
Put plainly, every part of that has to be true. The property is your home. The leak is on the buried pipe bringing water from the meter or boundary into the house, up to 30 m long, or on the pipes feeding your hot and cold taps. At least half a litre of water a minute is escaping. And you have asked us to open up and mend it once it is found. It covers one visit, looking for one leak, at one property.
Access means opening the ground, floor or wall at the spot we mark, so the pipe can be reached. The repair is quoted separately from the detection, and a repair price fixed beforehand holds good only when the mending is done on the day we find it. The promise only ever concerns the detection charge: it never covers the access or the repair.
How to check your leak against the half a litre rule
Half a litre a minute sounds small. Over an hour it comes to 30 litres, and over a day to 720. If your water company has written to you, the letter may already put a figure on the leak in litres an hour, so compare it with 30. A letter describing a few litres an hour points to a leak below the line. We can still look for it, outside the promise.
With no figure to go on, your meter can give you one. Meters record water in cubic metres. A cubic metre holds 1,000 litres, so 30 litres appears as 0.03 on the display. Before you start, let every toilet finish refilling and make sure the washing machine, the dishwasher and any hose are off.
Shut all the taps and stop every appliance that fills with water.
Write down every figure on the meter, including red ones or small dials.
Use no water at all for one hour.
Read the meter again and take away the first reading.
A rise of 30 litres or more means at least half a litre a minute.
Two things to rule out first
A toilet that trickles into the pan all day, or a loft tank spilling through its overflow pipe outside, will move the meter just as a buried leak does. Neither needs leak detection, and a plumber can usually put them right. Check both before you book, so the meter test is measuring the pipe you are worried about and nothing else.
What counts as found
We count the detection as a success once the leak is pinned to one room, or to a square about 5 m on each side. If we cannot get that close on a visit the promise covers, the detection is not charged. When we do locate a leak, we check it with a second method, then mark the spot and take photographs of it before leaving.
Because the mark rests on readings taken at the surface, it shows where opening up should begin, and the leak is proven only when the pipe is uncovered. Your written report sets down the location, methods, readings and photographs. We send it when the visit has been fully paid for.
What it does not cover
It does not cover central heating, shared mains, businesses or leaks that come and go. So a boiler that keeps losing pressure, a supply pipe that feeds next door as well as you, and a leak at a shop or office are all outside it, even when the leak is easy to find. The terms also leave out the six cases listed below.
Homes with a second kitchen, or bathrooms and toilets adding up to four or more
Pipes run through ducting or insulation, or laid under a membrane
Pipework that was not fitted to building and water regulations
Leaks that stop mid-visit, or are too slight to locate without opening up
Supply pipes whose route nobody knows
Visits where testing shows there is no leak at that time
Visits outside the promise
Being outside the promise does not mean we turn the job down. Heating leaks, long or unknown supply runs and business premises are all work we take on, priced the usual way. Three kinds of visit are paid at the agreed price, whatever we find: any visit the promise does not cover, a visit booked without a price being settled first, and a visit where we could not locate the leak because the details we were given were wrong.
Prices are agreed by phone or email before booking. Each one buys a block of time on site, sized to the job: a half-day slot for some, a full day for others. It stays the same if the leak shows itself in the first hour. Materials used on the day are added at cost, and so are any parking charges or tolls. If anything about the price is unclear, ask before you book.
A guess about a pipe's length or route, given as fact, can send the search the wrong way, so tell us what you know and what you are only guessing. When you ring, give us a rough length for the supply pipe, say where the meter sits, mention whether the pipe crosses a neighbour's land and tell us how many kitchens and bathrooms the house has.
Questions to ask about any promise
If you are comparing firms, read each promise in writing and hold its conditions up against your own leak, using any figures you already have, such as the litres an hour on a water company letter. These questions work for any offer, ours included, and the answers belong in the written terms, where you can check them later.
Which properties and which pipes does it cover?
How big must the leak be, and how is that measured?
What counts as found: a room, an area or the exact point?
Does it waive only the detection charge, or anything else?
Must the same firm carry out the access and repair?
What happens if the leak stops while they are there?
Where to read the full terms for no find, no fee on home water leaks
Section 4 of our terms page holds the promise in full, and the rest of the page covers booking, access, the report, repairs and payment. Read it before you book. When you ring, tell us which pipe you think is leaking and what the meter shows, and ask whether your visit falls inside the promise.
If you are claiming on home insurance, treat the promise and the claim as separate things. The promise concerns our detection charge and nothing more. Some home policies include trace and access, which deals with finding a hidden leak and reaching it. Whether to pay a claim rests with your insurer and nobody else. Look at your policy before booking anyone, since some insurers like to give their approval before work starts.