Water Leak Detection Cost: How the Bill Is Built

What are the published rates?

Detection is charged one of two ways. The package is £580 to locate a leak in one property, and that total is known before the visit. The other way is an hourly rate for the kind of work. No VAT is charged.

The standard rate is a fixed hourly rate that cannot rise on the day, so what moves the bill is the number of hours, not the rate. No find, no fee applies when a live leak inside your own property cannot be located

How do the hours add up on a real job?

The three shapes below are illustrations chosen to show how the rate card behaves. They are not averages, and none of them is a customer. The hours are stated so the arithmetic can be checked against the rates in the table above. For the range quoted across the wider trade, see the UK leak detection cost page.

Shape one is a damp patch under a bath where the pipes are reachable. Two hours at the standard rate covers a listening survey of the supply, a pressure test and a moisture check of the surround. Shape two is a mains supply that loses pressure somewhere between the stop tap and the house. Three hours at the mains rate allows for walking the line with acoustic equipment and confirming the point. Shape three is a suspected pipe run under a screed floor. Four hours at the tracer gas rate, with the gas charge on top, allows for a pressure test of each run, charging the suspect run and sweeping the floor with the detector. No VAT is charged.

How each rate compares with the package at these hours is worked out once, on the hourly rate against package page, and not repeated here. Six more scenarios are priced in the hourly versus package worked examples note.

When does the package replace the hourly sum?

The package is the starting point for locating one leak in one property. It does not depend on how long the leak takes, so a stubborn job that needs several methods costs the same as an easy one. What the package includes lists the scope, and the exclusions are larger repairs, access and making good, and leaks outside the property such as the water company's main, a communal pipe or a neighbour's supply.

Hourly rates are the route for work the package does not cover, such as a supply pipe outside the property boundary or a site where more than one property is involved. Ask which applies when you book.

What is not in the detection price?

Detection finds the leak and records where it is. It does not include opening the structure, a larger repair or making good the finish. 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, agreed first. A larger repair is quoted before any work starts, and the leak is stopped in the meantime. Damage to walls, ceilings and finishes is quoted by a partner team of builders and decorators, who give a price for each job; see leak repair after detection and leak damage repair and remediation. The access and making good page sets out what each opening involves.

Whether a home insurance policy pays towards detection is covered in leak detection cost with home insurance; cover depends on the policy and the insurer decides.

A leak that belongs to a neighbour, a communal pipe or the water company's main is still a located leak and is charged, because finding it was the work. A survey that rules a leak out is also charged, since ruling it out is the answer. Waiting also has a cost of its own: the pinhole leak water loss page works out litres and pounds lost by hole size.

What decides the number of hours?

Four things stretch or shorten a visit. Access comes first: pipes behind fixed panels or under finished floors take longer to test one run at a time. Pipe material matters next, because plastic carries leak noise less far than metal, which can mean combining acoustic work with gas or pressure testing. The third is whether the water can be isolated in sections, since isolation narrows the search quickly. The fourth is whether a leak runs constantly or only under certain loads, such as when a heating circuit is hot.

The how long a survey takes page gives published test and gas times, and the leak detection accuracy page explains what a result can and cannot pin down. None of these can be known from a phone description alone, which is why the cost is built from a rate and not a promise of hours.

Sources

Rates and the package are the company's own, set out on the price pages. The statement about leak noise in plastic pipe draws on research by Hunaidi and colleagues at the National Research Council of Canada and the Gao, Brennan, Joseph, Muggleton and Hunaidi paper on buried plastic pipe (Journal of Sound and Vibration, 2004), checked October 2026.