Commercial Kitchen Leak Detection in London

Why are kitchen leaks hard to find?

Most of a commercial kitchen's pipework is out of sight on purpose. Hot and cold feeds run behind stainless cladding, under fixed counters and up through the wall behind a cooking line. Water that escapes there rarely drips where it starts. It follows the pipe, runs under equipment and appears as a wet floor in a corner or a stain in the room below.

Heat makes it harder. A hot feed warms the wall around it whether it leaks or not, so a plain warm patch on a thermal image proves nothing. The reading that matters is a cold or wet area beside a pipe that should be dry, and that is checked against a pressure result rather than trusted on its own.

How does the survey fit around the service window?

The sequence is set by what the kitchen cannot do without. Retained food hygiene law, Regulation (EC) 852/2004 as it applies in the United Kingdom, requires an adequate supply of potable water and hand basins with hot and cold running water. So the handwash runs stay on until last, or are tested in a second visit, and the dishwasher and ice machine feeds go first because they can be isolated at a service valve without stopping prep.

Refrigeration is not part of the water survey and stays running throughout, although the small feed to an ice maker or water dispenser is checked as a water run; the fridge water line guide shows the five places that tube usually fails. If a unit is connected to the same circuit as something that has to be switched off, say so when you enquire so it can be planned.

What does a worked sequence look like for a 4-hour window?

The sequence is an invented example to show the order of work. It assumes the kitchen closes at 23:00, deliveries arrive at 07:00 and the team has a window from midnight to 04:00, with a wet floor reported by the dishwasher and a stained ceiling in the room below.

What should be ready before the visit?

Short preparation saves hours on the clock.

• Where the stop tap and each service valve is, marked on a sketch if the valves are not labelled
• Which equipment must stay on, and which can be switched off at the isolator
• The first and last time the kitchen can be reached
• Which floor, cupboard or ceiling shows the damage, and when it was first noticed
• A named person who can open stores, plant rooms and the room below

What the survey cannot tell you

It cannot find a leak in a run that cannot be isolated, so a kitchen with no valve on a branch is tested at the next valve up and the search area is larger. It cannot prove a pipe is sound where cladding is welded in place and no opening is available; the report says what was and was not reachable. Leaks beyond the water supply, such as a blocked waste or a grease trap, are outside this survey, although a suspected waste leak can be checked with a dye test. A small repair, such as tightening a fitting or replacing a small part on the pipe, can be done on the same visit once the leak is found; a larger repair is quoted before any work starts, and the leak is stopped in the meantime. Both are set out under leak repair after detection. Tracer gas, where it is needed, is charged at the hourly rate plus £80 once for the gas. No VAT is charged. Reinstating cladding is outside the survey and is covered by the leak damage repair and remediation page.

For the wider picture of how a business site is surveyed, see the commercial leak detection page. The pressure testing and isolation testing pages explain the two tests used most in a kitchen. The domestic version of the hose and connector checks is in connection checks by appliance.

Sources

Regulation (EC) No 852/2004 on the hygiene of foodstuffs, retained in United Kingdom law, Annex II: chapter I (hand basins with hot and cold running water), chapter VII (an adequate supply of potable water): legislation.gov.uk, read October 2026.