Argh, help, where is this water coming from?

[FreezerBird]

Getting clean sheets out of the airing cupboard and they're wet. Have pulled everything put of the cupboard and found this. At first I thought the leak was from the red tap above the water tank, but actually it's running down from the attic.

Can't get up there at the moment (I am too short). DH back shortly.

Photos:
The floor of the airing cupboard with electrics for immersion heater. Worryingly wet.
The pipe coming down from the attic; there is water on the outside but not sure how visible in photo.

Haven't looked at the ceiling downstairs yet. Would have said itt can't have been like it for long but it does look very wet.

Emergency plumber now or wait for DH and investigate above?

There is hot water in the tank, leaking water is cold, so presumably that's the fees from the tank in the attic. Will there be a tap up there to isolate the supply to the hot water tank?

Photos - they never post on OP for me.

We had this, it was a crack in our water tank in the roof. There was a tap to turn it off but it was tucked away in the roof and hard to get to so we just turned the water off and then ran the taps until it was dry. We had to get the tank replaced.

We had this too, it turned out to be condensation on the pipes

I wonder if that's it. Can't know until I can get in the attic I suppose. How long did it take to get it sorted?

Much too much for condensation I would say, and no reason why that should suddenly happen - the things at the back of the cupboard were soaking so it's quite a lot of water.

I'm just going to quickly page @pigletjohn to seek further wisdom...

Worryingly close to the electrics though, turn off the water until DH comes home. We have an isolation valve in the airing cupboard, usually a red handle?

From what I remember it was a couple of days to fix. But that was because they had to order a new tank etc.

The thing you need to be careful of is your ceiling being soaking wet and the heavy tank coming through. We only had a small trickle running down the walls but when we investigated the loft it was soaking wet. We emptied the tank to reduce the weight as well as to stop the leak.

Thanks all, sorry to disappear. Hectic here as you can imagine...will be back at some point!

Hope it gets sorted ASAP

I expect you've dealt with it now, but most likely an overflow from a loft tank. Turning off the main stopcock will probablt stop it, but if you then run the bath taps as well it will drain the tank.

Loft tanks should always have overflow pipes to take the water outside the house where you can see it and be warned. Sometimes they get blocked with rubbish or birds nests, especially if the tank does not have a hygenic, tight-fitting plastic lid.

Maybe the ball-valve in the tank has jammed or fallen apart, or maybe you have a mixer tap conneced to mains-fed cold supply (high pressure) which is worn and allowing the cold water to flow up the hot pipe, into the cylinder, then up into the loft tanks. Ceramix joystick mixers are most prone to that, but sometimes it's a shower mixer. You might detect it because the mixer, and its pipes, are surprisingly cold due to the watermain flowing through them.

Changing a ball-valve is easy if you have a set of adjustable wrenches.

This is a very good one, suitable for a cold tank.

Inferior ones are also available.

btw avoid contact with the stuff in the airing cupboard unless you have turned off the power at the main switchm and verified tat all circuits are dead. There was a very sad case where a person was kneeling in a pool of water in an airing cupboard, mopping it up, and grasped a copper pipe to steady herself. The pipe was earthed and the pool was in contact with electrical live wires.