Leak between water meter and house

[Ineedanewjobsoon]

When we switch the water off in the house the meter still turns, when it’s switch off at the meter, ther meter stops. So the leak is on my property, somewhere between the meter and the house.
How on earth do we find the leak?
The house is set back from the road and the pipe is buried underground, so a lot to dig up.

Anyone had this problem and how did you go about tracing the leak?

When we had this issue the water board sorted it - as it was their connection to the house that was the issue, rather than internal.

So there is a meter on the mains and your house has a meter?
Don't see how you can get to it without digging tbh. Some house insurance cover this, the water supplier also sell optional cover for this so worth checking if either apply to you

I had this last year, well sort of similar but anyway. Thames water sent someone out to look but they were useless and basically said you’ve got six weeks I think it was to fix it or we can force you to. We had a leak detection company in who did gas testing and after a lot of faff located it to the junction between our property and the street.

How old is your house? If you have a lead water pipe (probably do if older than 1970’s ish) then I’d put money on the leak being where your hookup to the street is. If so, the water company will come and fix, however they will only do that bit and maybe a few feet more into your boundary and then couple their new MDPE with your old lead. It’ll work but then you’ll probably have another leak in a year or two.

I dug a trench and replaced the whole thing with MDPE. It’s not a hard job, but it is a physical one. I also had to pull up the floor in our front room to run the new pipe into our kitchen, so quite a lot of mess. We’ve got a relatively small front garden at 3 metres or so long and the trench took 2 days to dig. You’ve got to be careful you don’t go through any gas or electric pipes / cables but if you go slow then you’ll be fine. If you want to be extra safe you can hire something called a cat and genny to locate underground pipes, but as I had the front room floor up I could see where the gas and electric exited the property so knew I was well clear. Your local water board will have all the info about regs on their site too - it needs to be 750mm deep. Whole job including relaying front room floor took a few weeks, but people were quoting 5k upwards to do it so well worth my time.

Most water companies offer leak detection for free even on private land
depending on what sort of pipe you have it’s sometimes easier to just dig and renew the whole run
if you’re doing it yourself then look for obvious wet patches if you know where the pipe runs then dig down and cut and cap it halfway that’ll tell you which side the leak is, keep doing this until you find it

We had this recently. Had a leak detection company in and they recommended having another pipe ‘moled’ from the meter to the stop cock. Rather than the cost of further tests inc gas tests. We got a ‘moling’ company quote, it was £1200 inc vat to run the new pipe under the driveway. As it turned out when they came to do it the issue was with the meter so the new pipe wasn’t run and the water company are coming out to look on 4th April. The water company were reluctant to take responsibility though, until we confirmed at the things we’d already done.

Google water pipe moling and it with give you an idea of what it is. Essentially laying a new pipe rather than trying to repair.

My parents had this and it was covered by house insurance so may be worthwhile speaking to them.

Likewise when we had an escape of water leak in the kitchen, the insurance paid for leak detection - we just paid for the repair once found so a couple of hundred £.

We had similar and the water company came around to check where the leak was exactly. I think that's your first move.

It was the water company who informed us of the leak after fitting a new meter.
I have changed some details, but MDPE pipe was installed 12 years ago, definitely not covered by insurance unfortunately.

Will look into the moling suggestion, I’ve never heard of that, so thanks.

Water company usually offers one repair/replacement per house so they sould be your first point of call
We had this and they replaced FOC the pipe from the meter in the footpath all the way to the intake point at the rear of the house (and yes, they did mole).
Moved house to another water authority area and they offered exactly the same service, both done at nil cost to us and no involvement of our insurance company.