Leak Detection in Brighouse

In plenty of older Brighouse houses the mains supply enters at cellar level and the stopcock is down there with it. That is the first place we look when the meter keeps turning: the incoming pipe, the stopcock itself and the first few joints after it.

Old stopcocks deserve a mention of their own. They are often seized from years of being left alone, and one that will not turn makes any leak harder to manage. If yours is stiff, leave it rather than forcing it; freeing or replacing it is part of the job.

On a sloping street water follows the slope. In terraces stepping up the hill, damp from a leak can appear lower down the house, or further along a wall, than the pipe that caused it.

That is why tracing goes by the systems rather than the stain. We establish which supply is losing water first, and only then where along it the loss is.

The older heating systems here are often the ones where a slow loss of pressure has simply been lived with: a top-up every few weeks becomes routine. Each refill adds fresh water and oxygen, and in soft-water West Yorkshire that feeds the corrosion and sludge we already find in a lot of older Brighouse homes.

Finding the leak breaks that cycle. If a system has been topped up for years, we may also suggest checking whether it needs cleaning, and we will say plainly if we think it does not.