Introduction

This is just a highlight of what can make a simple day, turn into a real night mare for both our customers and our engineers. Patience and understanding is key to keeping calm and dealing with situations, well beyond our control and often the path to these issues was laid some years before by shoddy tradesman in the past.

As leak detection technicians, we often find ourselves navigating through various challenges, but few are as frustrating and time-consuming as dealing with non-compliant pipes and cables hidden beneath floors. What seems like a routine task of digging up a floor can quickly turn into a nightmare when confronted with poorly installed or non-compliant infrastructure. In this blog post, we’ll explore the challenges faced by both our customers and our engineers when encountering such situations.

The Discovery

Picture this: You’re in the middle of the leak detection, the leak has been located and all is going well. Considering they have a leak, our customer is happy it is going to be resolved. It is now time to dig up the floor to make way for a repair. Everything seems to be going according to plan until you stumble upon pipes that don’t comply with building regulations or, worse, cables that have been haphazardly laid without protection in the screed.. Suddenly, what should have been a straightforward task becomes a nightmare for both our client and ourselves to deal with.

Customer Frustration

For our customers, discovering non-compliant pipes and cut cables can be incredibly frustrating. They’ve entrusted us with their renovation or construction project, expecting a smooth and efficient process. However, encountering such issues not only delays the project but also incurs additional costs. Moreover, it shatters their confidence in the our expertise and can lead to doubts about the overall quality of the work being done; yet we are not responsible for pipework and cables installed illegally.

Engineer Frustration

On the other side of the equation are our engineers, who are tasked with resolving these unexpected obstacles. Dealing with non-compliant pipes and cables, we are trying to dig up hard concrete, but need to be gentle enough to not damage services. But in these examples (the image was just the other day) It’s not just a matter of fixing the immediate problem; our engineers must also ensure that the solution complies with building regulations and doesn’t compromise the integrity of the structure. This can involve tedious rerouting of pipes, repairing damaged cables, and sometimes even redesigning entire sections of the project.

In the images, we found a gas pipe illegally laid (a criminal offence in the UK) and cables laid haphazardly in the screed. Inevitably, these get damaged as they either should not be there or are laid with no logical routing or protection.

Conclusion

Dealing with non-compliant pipes and cables during a leak detection is undoubtedly a daunting task. It tests the patience and expertise of both our customers and our engineers. 

In these cases a gas plumber is required to make a temporary repair and the gas must be fee-routed. We will try to deal with cables, but these too, will normally need an electrician to attend for a permanent repair.

Fortunately, this is all refundable as part of an insurance claim, under the “Trace and Access” portion of the insurance policy.