FAQ

If you have trace and access cover on your building insurance policy, then effectively it will cost you nothing!

Often there will be an excess of a few hundred pounds on most policies, but this is all it should cost to locate, access and restore the affected area.

However, any repairs to pipework are maintenance of your property, and you must pay for these to be carried out. However, with the cost of finding and getting to the leak covered, this is often a fitting costing about £1 and the labour to fit.

Due to repairs not being covered under insurance, we do not […]

You must get a certificate of dryness, normally drying machines will remove the moisture over a few weeks. Although the surface will dry quickly, there is moisture trapped deep in sub-floor areas that will cause mould and rot.

We recommend using a company that specializes in repairing water damage and dealing with insurance companies to handle your claim. You may well have your favourite builders, but dealing with insurers takes special skill…and the patience of a saint!

Drying is normally carried out with several industrial dehumidifier machines running to bring down the moisture levels. This is all covered under your insurance, even the […]

We are not builders, keeping our scope and skillset to leak detection.

Repairing will require drying machines, decorators, carpenters, tilers, and flooring specialists. In our experience, even builders struggle to accurately quote to restore water-damaged properties.

If an insurance claim is made, we recommend using a claims management company. They will carry out all required work and are paid directly by the insurer. The profit from this work allows them the scope to deal with an often argumentative insurer and the hours spent on the phone with them!

In short, we are not builders, and you will require a certificate of dryness and a […]

Very simply, the cost of locating and accessing a leak, it is a vital part of ANY buildings insurance policy. If your policy does not have it, either add it or change insurers ASAP. The cover is normally £5000 of works or damage.

However, once an area is already water damaged the full policy covers this.

In general, we do not carry out repairs as standard for a few reasons:

Insurance claims are 90% of our work, and insurers will generally pay for the Trace (Leak Detection) and Access (Digging it up); they will not pay for the repair, as the insurer classes this as maintenance.

When the repair is simple (often a £5 fitting), the cost is in finding and getting to the leak and the restoration works required. If we repair, there is an element not covered by the insurer. They have argued with our customers about the ratio of repair costs and tried to deduct hundreds […]

This is the destructive access of an area with a suspected leak, carried out after our initial leak detection visit…the messy bit!

Leak Detection (trace) and these destructive works (access) are the parts usually refunded to you by the insurer under the “Trace & Access” portion of building insurance.

Where only minor access is needed, we may carry this out simultaneously. Otherwise, this is charged at the same rate as leak detection, a full report is also made for this access, to show how works have progressed.

We must carry out the access works to keep the protection of our ‘No find – No […]

Leak detection is usually carried out on a single visit.

There are times when further visits are required, which are chargeable at the same rate; however this is rare, and there is usually an underlying reason. Lack of access (particularly in flats) and blockages in heating systems are the typical issues. When undertaking insured works, there is normally an amount set for this of £5,000 by the insurer, and they will cover unavoidable re-visits.

Once the leak is located, we offer intrusive access to the leak at the same cost as leak detection. Again, this is covered if you have trace and access […]

That really is the ‘how long is a piece of string’ question!

We would always ask that we have access for the full day.

Heating takes the longest on average; most visits take at least half a day, but there are times that an issue is found much sooner.

A hot/cold water leak will take about half a day to locate and provide a report on.

Sometimes what we think is ‘easy’ turns into a real head-scratching ‘hard’ leak and vice-versa.

When it comes to heating leaks, it’s pretty unlikely that we’ll need to turn off the water. But for any other leak detection tasks, our engineer will likely have to shut off the water for a little while.

When our engineer is doing pressure tests, we’ll need to have the water turned off, and it’s important that nobody uses water during this time, including toilets and appliances.

Likewise, if we’re using trace gas to detect leaks, using water or not being able to shut off all the stopcocks can let that trace gas escape and mess up the test.

So, it’s super important that […]

Contemporary leak detection strives to identify leaks while minimizing potential harm or damage.

On certain occasions, a minor level of access may be necessary to inspect or verify an issue. Typically, this involves the removal of a bath panel, and in rare instances (typically beneath shower trays), we may need to create a small hole approximately the size of a pencil to insert a small camera into concealed areas.

Maintaining minimal damage is crucial when making an insurance claim, as “speculative” damage is typically not covered!