Can a Water Leak Wait Until Morning? A Night-Time Check

Can a water leak wait until morning?

Sometimes, and the honest answer is a set of conditions rather than a yes or a no. A leak that has been stopped, contained and checked can sit until daylight without much harm. A leak that is still running cannot, because every hour it runs is another hour of water going somewhere you cannot see.

The difficulty at night is judgement. You are tired, the light is poor, the room is unfamiliar in the dark and everything looks worse than it is, or sometimes better. A fixed set of questions takes the guesswork out. Answer them in order, add up the points and the total gives you a verdict.

The score is a guide for ordinary homes and flats. It does not replace common sense. If you feel unsafe, if somebody in the home is vulnerable or if something about the leak worries you that the questions do not cover, ring. A call to ask is never a wasted call.

A five-question score you can do in five minutes

Go through the five factors below. Give each one 0, 1 or 2 points, based on the column that matches what you see, and add the points together. Do the factors in this order, because the early ones are the ones that matter most.

Factor one, electrics, overrides the rest. If water has reached anything electrical, stop scoring and call now, because no total makes that safe to leave.

What your total means

Add up the points from the five factors. The bands below match the verdicts on this page. They are deliberately cautious about anything above the lowest band.

• Zero to one point: can wait until morning. Close the supply if the leak was on it, contain what is left, record it and check before bed.
• Two to three points: borderline. Hold it with the steps below and ring to talk it through. A short conversation, with your answers to hand, usually settles whether tonight or tomorrow is right.
• Four points or more, or a 2 on electrics or control: call now. The water is either unstoppable by you or it is reaching something that cannot be allowed to get wet.

What a night visit costs, and what waiting costs

Attending an active leak at night is from £220 an hour, and the same rate applies at weekends and on bank holidays. It is a fixed hourly rate quoted before we attend and never exceeded, and the exact rate is stated when you book. No VAT is charged. No call-out fee and no travel charge: the rate starts when work starts, so you pay for the time spent on your leak and nothing before it starts.

Waiting for daylight can mean a lower rate, because standard leak detection is £160 an hour. That difference is real but small beside what a spreading leak does. A visit to find a leak in one or two rooms has a typical total of £320 at that rate, which is a worked example and not a quote. A floor that stays wet overnight, or a ceiling that fills and drops, can cost more to put right than the whole difference between the two rates.

So the sensible rule is the one the score gives you. If the leak is contained and low-scoring, waiting saves a little and risks little. If it scores high, the saving is not worth it. The pricing page lists every rate and the night-time visit cost page shows how a visit adds up.

What changes overnight

The reason a leak that looks harmless at ten can look different at six is that several things change while nobody is watching.

Pressure and flow. Mains pressure is often a little higher at night, when neighbours are not drawing water, so a pinhole that wept in the evening can flow harder at three in the morning. A drip that you caught in a cup can overflow it.

Where the water goes. Water does not stay put. It runs to the lowest point, soaks along skirting, wicks up plaster and finds its way along joists. A damp patch you could cover with a hand at midnight can be the size of a door by breakfast, and the room below can be wet before you wake.

Ceiling load. Plaster and plasterboard can hold a surprising amount of water. A ceiling that is collecting it can sag, bulge and then drop with a weight that can injure someone and damage everything below. The risk rises the longer water arrives.

Heating. If the leak is on a heating pipe, a boiler that comes on in the early morning will refill the system, and a leak that was quiet can start again. Turn the heating off at the programmer before you go to bed if there is any chance the leak is on that circuit.

Nobody is looking. In the evening you notice a change. At night nobody does, and by morning the choice about when to call has already been made for you.

How to buy hours safely: isolate, contain, mark

If your score puts you in the wait or borderline band, these steps make the next few hours safer. They apply to both, and they are worth doing even if you decide to ring.

• Shut off the water at the stop tap if the leak is on the supply or you are not sure where it is. Fill a kettle and a few bottles first so you have water to drink and wash with overnight.
• Open a cold tap at the lowest point to empty the pipes, then leave it open until the flow has stopped.
• Turn the heating off at the programmer and switch the immersion heater off at its own switch if you can reach it dry.
• Contain what is left. Put a bucket or a bowl under a drip with a towel beneath it, and put a tray or a folded towel along any line where water is travelling.
• Move belongings, rugs and electrical items out of the wet area, and keep the area clear of people, especially under a ceiling that is stained.
• Mark the edge of any damp patch or stain with a pencil and write the time beside it.
• Set an alarm to check the container and the mark before you sleep and, if you can, once in the night.

What to record tonight

A few minutes of recording now saves a lot of explaining later, and it matters to an insurer as well as to the engineer.

Take photographs of the leak, the wet area and the surroundings, with something in the shot to show scale. Take a short video of the drip or the flow if there is one, because a video shows rate in a way a photograph cannot. Photograph the pencil mark and the time beside it. Photograph the stop tap closed and the meter, if you can reach it safely, because a meter that keeps moving with everything off is a clue the engineer will want to know about.

Write down when you first noticed the leak, what you were doing, what you turned off and at what time, and which rooms are affected above and below. A text to yourself works as well as paper. If you rent, send the same note to your landlord or agent tonight, because a message with a time on it shows the leak was reported at once.

If the leak is on the supply side

Some leaks are on the pipe that brings water to the property rather than the pipes inside it. The signs are a wet patch in a garden or on a path, a damp or flooded meter box, sound of water near where the pipe enters, or a meter that keeps turning with every tap and appliance off.

The stop tap inside the house will not stop a leak on the incoming pipe, because the leak is upstream of it. Closing the stop tap protects the inside of the house and stops water being drawn through the fittings, but the pipe outside stays under pressure.

If there is a stop valve at the boundary in a meter box, closing it may help, but it can be stiff and it belongs to the water company, so do not use tools on it. Do not dig. If water is coming up through the pavement or the road, report it to your water company, and tell whoever you call.

A supply-side leak that is losing water into the ground, and is not entering the building, is usually a morning job once you have reported it. One that is flooding a cellar, a basement or a lower floor is not.

What the engineer does when you call

A night visit follows the same order as a daytime one. The engineer asks what you saw, looks at your photographs and the pencil marks, and checks that the supply and any electrics near the leak are safe before starting work.

Then comes the search. Depending on the symptoms that can be moisture mapping, thermal imaging, acoustic listening, tracer gas, pressure testing or an endoscope. The method is chosen to suit the situation and explained before it is used.

When the source is found the leak is stopped. A small fix, such as tightening a fitting or changing a small part, is done on the spot once the leak is found. For a longer repair the leak is stopped first, and the repair is quoted in writing after that. Making good, such as walls, ceilings and decorating, is quoted per job by a partner team. The how it works page covers the visit step by step, and the emergency leak detection page explains the methods.

There is a narrow free case. No find, no fee waives the detection fee only when a live leak inside your own property cannot be located. The boundaries are on the no find, no fee page.

What this score cannot tell you

The score cannot see behind a wall or under a floor. A leak that looks small on the surface can be large behind it, and a dry surface can sit on top of a wet structure. If you are scoring a stain on a ceiling or a damp wall, treat the number as a floor rather than a ceiling.

It does not know who is in the home. A leak that is a reasonable wait for a fit adult can be a poor wait where somebody relies on running water for medical reasons, or where a baby or an older person is in the property. In those homes lean towards calling.

It does not tell you the cause. The same points can come from a failed joint, a split flexible hose, a heating pipe or a neighbour. Finding the source is what the engineer is for, and the who to call page covers whom to ring first.