Emergency Leak Detection Cost: What Decides the Hours

The sum behind the bill

There is one calculation behind every leak detection bill: the rate multiplied by the hours spent on your problem. Nothing else is added for the instruments, the report or the journey, with one exception, the tracer gas cylinder, which is covered further down.

The rate is the part that is settled before the visit. When you book, you are told the rate for your job, and it is a fixed hourly rate quoted before we attend and never exceeded. The emergency figure is from £220 an hour, the standard figure is £160 an hour, and the other rates are on the pricing page. No VAT is charged.

That leaves the hours, which are the honest unknown. They cannot be read from a phone description, and nobody who claims to know the hours before they have seen the leak is giving you a measurement. What can be done is to explain what lengthens a search and what shortens it, and to show worked examples. That is the purpose of the rest of this page.

What decides how many hours a leak takes

Four things account for most of the difference between a short visit and a long one. Knowing them lets you read your own situation against the worked examples further down and decide which one it resembles.

• Where the pipe is: a pipe on show takes minutes to check, while one under a screed floor or behind tiles needs listening, imaging and sometimes tracer gas.
• How many systems could be at fault: if the water might be coming from the supply, a heating circuit or a waste connection, each is tested and ruled out in turn.
• How far the water has travelled: water runs along joists, pipes and ceilings, so a stain can be a long way from its source and the search has to follow it back.
• How much is known before work starts: a stain with a clear history, such as appearing the day after a bath was used upstairs, narrows the search at once.

Worked example: a ceiling stain after a bath

A maisonette has a brown stain spreading on the kitchen ceiling, and it grew overnight. The people upstairs used the bath the evening before. This is a standard search in one or two rooms: check the bathroom above, test the supply and waste connections, scan the ceiling with thermal imaging and map the moisture.

A job of this kind typically takes 2 hours at £160 an hour, a typical total of £320. If the water is still escaping and you want someone out at night, the same search is charged at the emergency rate stated at booking, using the hours the job takes. The sum has the same shape and a different rate. No VAT is charged.

If the leak proves to come from the flat above, it has been located and the hours are charged. That outcome is explained on the no find, no fee page, and it is one reason the written record matters: it lets you take the finding to the person who has to fix it.

Worked example: damp across a whole house

A three-storey terrace has damp patches on two different floors and a smell in the hall. There is no obvious source, and the leak might be the supply, a heating pipe or a waste connection. The search starts at the meter and the stop tap, tests the supply for loss, pressure tests each heating circuit and then moves through the rooms with listening gear and a thermal camera.

A whole-house search of this kind typically takes 3 to 4 hours at £160 an hour, a typical total of £480 to £640. The range is wider than the single-room one because the number of places to check is larger, and an engineer who finds the answer on the second floor stops there rather than checking the rest. No VAT is charged.

The point to take from this one is that the hours follow the search and not the size of the house. A large house with an obvious cause is a short visit. A small flat with a hidden pipe in a solid floor can be a long one.

Worked example: a pipe under a solid floor

A ground floor kitchen has a floor that feels damp and a meter that creeps when everything is off. Listening gives a faint, unclear signal, which is common when a pipe runs through a solid floor with water noise travelling along it. This is the kind of job where tracer gas earns its place.

The pipe is emptied and filled with the gas mixture and the detector follows the strongest reading to the spot. Tracer gas work is £160 an hour, plus the cylinder at £80 charged once and only because gas was used. A typical total is £400 to £720 over 2 to 4 hours, with the cylinder inside both ends of that range. No VAT is charged.

If listening had found the leak first, there would have been no gas and no cylinder. The engineer says before the gas goes in that it is about to be used, so the decision is yours and the extra charge is never a surprise.

Worked example: a supply pipe between the street and the house

A house has a meter that turns steadily with every tap off, and the garden by the front path has gone soft. The suspicion is the supply pipe, the length of pipe between the boundary and the stop tap. This is a mains search, run at £180 an hour, and it typically takes 2 to 3 hours for a typical total of £360 to £540. No VAT is charged.

The method is to confirm the loss with the meter, isolate the supply from the house pipework to prove the leak is outside the building, then listen along the line and pinpoint where the sound is strongest. A supply pipe that is the water company’s responsibility on its side of the boundary is a located leak and is charged as one, which is why the extent of the pipe is established first.

A supply leak is often urgent in a way a damp patch is not, since water is lost continuously and can undermine ground. Be ready to say if the meter is moving when you ring. It is one of the clearest facts you can give.

When the work changes rate during a visit

Not every visit stays in one lane. A search that begins as standard detection can turn into something else once the first readings are in, and the rate follows the work being done. If the leak turns out to be in a heating circuit or an underfloor loop, that work is £200 an hour. If the pipe is inside a structure that has to be opened, tracing it is £200 an hour and comes with an insurer-ready written report. Charting where water travels through a wall or floor is moisture mapping, from from £175 an hour. No VAT is charged.

You are told when the work changes, before the new rate starts and not afterwards, and the old rate stops at that point. Because the rate is a fixed hourly rate quoted before we attend and never exceeded, no rate is introduced that was not on the card you were quoted from. The practical effect is that a visit may be billed in two parts, each part at its own rate, and both parts are visible on the invoice as hours.

It is also worth saying what does not trigger a change. A leak being larger than expected does not move the rate. A leak found late in the night does not move it either. Only a different kind of work does.

What to say when you ring

A few facts, given at the start, shorten the search more reliably than anything else. None of them is a condition of booking, and nothing about the rate depends on them.

• Whether the water is still escaping or the stop tap has stopped it.
• Whether the meter moves with everything off, if you have one and can see it.
• Where the water appears, and when you first noticed it.
• Whether you live in a flat, and whether a neighbour or a shared pipe could be involved.
• Any recent plumbing, bathroom or heating work in the building.

What out-of-hours attendance changes

Nights, weekends and bank holidays are inside the emergency rate. That is the whole of what changes: the rate applied is the emergency one, stated when you book, and there is no further uplift stacked on top of it. The rate is a fixed hourly rate quoted before we attend and never exceeded, so a leak that runs late into the night does not climb to a higher rate on the clock.

What does not change is the method. The same equipment, the same sequence of checks and the same written report apply at three in the morning as at three in the afternoon. The out-of-hours cost is covered in its own page on what an out of hours leak call costs, including what to ask any firm that attends at night. No VAT is charged.

What is never charged

Two charges that people expect are absent. No call-out fee and no travel charge: the rate starts when work starts. That wording is exact. The clock does not start when the engineer leaves for your address, it starts when work on your leak begins.

The instruments are not billed either. Listening equipment, thermal imaging, moisture meters, the endoscope and pressure and dye testing are all inside the hours, as is the written report. The one consumable charged on top is the tracer gas cylinder, and only when gas is used. No VAT is charged.

If the leak cannot be found

Most searches find the leak, and the hours are charged. There is one narrow case where the detection fee is waived. No find, no fee waives the detection fee only when a live leak inside your own property cannot be located.

The edges are worth knowing. A leak that proves to be a neighbour’s, a communal riser’s or the water company’s main is a located leak and is charged. A survey that rules out a leak is charged too, because the answer is the product. The full explanation is on the no find, no fee page.

The cost after the leak is found

Finding the leak is one stage. Repair work runs at the same hourly rate as detection, with parts and materials costed on top and agreed before we start. A small fix, such as tightening a fitting or changing a small part, is done on the spot once the leak is found, and the part is listed and agreed before work starts. For a longer repair the leak is stopped first, and the repair is quoted in writing after that. No VAT is charged.

Damage to walls, ceilings and finishes is not part of this bill. Making good, such as walls, ceilings and decorating, is quoted per job by a partner team. If you want to understand what a repair quote should contain, how a leak repair quote works walks through one, and the emergency leak repair page describes what the team does once the water is stopped.