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- Care home: a spinning meter and a soaked kitchen floor
Two cold water leaks under a care home kitchen floor, found when pressure testing could not hold
The meter was spinning fast and the kitchen floor was saturated. The leak was too big to pressure test, so thermal imaging and acoustics found it instead, and a second leak turned up once the first was repaired.
What was happening
The water meter was spinning continuously and at high speed, and the kitchen floor was wet through. With residents in the building, the leak needed finding and fixing quickly.
What the engineer did
Thermal imaging across the kitchen floor mapped the cold water pipes and flagged two suspect areas: one in front of the dishwasher and one beside the fridge freezer. The engineer tried a pressure test, but the leak was losing water too fast for any pressure to build. Acoustic equipment was used instead and picked up a clear signal in front of the dishwasher.
What was found
Under the vinyl, the subfloor was saturated and a copper pipe in front of the dishwasher was leaking. After that repair the system still would not hold pressure, which confirmed a second leak: a faulty fitting beside the fridge freezer, the other spot the thermal survey had picked out. The dishwasher's own pipework also showed damage consistent with rodents.
What happened next
ADI repaired the leaking copper pipe, replaced the faulty fitting and that section of pipe, and retested the whole system, which then held pressure. The dishwasher was disconnected. The engineer recommended replacing the internal stopcock and fitting a pressure reducing valve, as high pressure was thought to have contributed, and the kitchen floor needed replacing.
If you look after an office building
One repair does not always mean the job is done. Retesting the whole system after the first fix is what exposed the second leak, and a building with high water pressure is worth a pressure reducing valve before it happens again.
More case studies
Commercial premises: water pooling in the entrance foyer
Water was pooling on the foyer floor and the office flooring was discolouring. Thermal imaging, a pressure test and tracer gas put the leak under the kitchen threshold, where ADI dug down and repaired it.
School: a hissing classroom and a saturated field
The meter was passing a litre every five seconds and one classroom was hissing. Isolation, tracer gas and acoustic listening found a leak on the buried pipe to a single desk tap, which ADI capped off and pressure tested.