What Red Rose Leak Detection is and does

What is Red Rose Leak Detection?

Red Rose Leak Detection is a regional brand that traces leaks on heating, water and supply pipes across Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Lancashire, Cheshire and Cumbria.

Each kind of hidden leak has its own investigation, and the first sign usually says which one a property needs.

• A boiler gauge that keeps falling calls for central heating leak detection, which traces the water a sealed heating system is losing to a radiator valve, a joint, a pipe under the floor or an underfloor heating loop.
• Stains and damp on a wall or ceiling point to pipe leak detection, which narrows a leak in the hot or cold water pipework to one point, in a wall, beneath a floor or above a ceiling.
• A meter that keeps moving with the internal stop tap closed suggests a leak on the buried supply pipe, the length an owner looks after from the property boundary into the building, and that is the work of underground water leak detection.
• An insurer that wants the leak behind an escape of water claim located before the claim goes any further is asking for trace and access: the hidden leak is found and its position recorded, with the access needed to reach it.

How does Red Rose Leak Detection approach a hidden leak?

Red Rose Leak Detection approaches a hidden leak by testing which system is losing water, then narrowing the leak to one point with instruments that listen, read heat, trace gas or map moisture.

The order stays the same whichever system is at fault. First, the investigation confirms that water is being lost and isolates the system losing it; next, it tests which part will not hold pressure; once that part is known, the instrument that suits the pipe pins the spot, and the position is recorded for whoever repairs it.

Pressure testing can show that a leak exists before a floorboard comes up, and the other four methods then narrow it to the place where the water escapes. Red Rose Leak Detection locates and records the leak; the repair belongs to whoever is responsible for that pipe.

Each of the five methods below works from the surface or through the pipe itself.

Acoustic listening

Acoustic listening hears a leak: water escaping under pressure is noisy, and a listening stick on the pipe or a ground microphone on the surface carries that noise to a receiver and headphones, so the leak lies under the point where it is strongest.

Thermal imaging

Thermal imaging maps heat on a surface: the camera reads the temperature of a wall, floor or ceiling, so a leak appears only where it changes that temperature, as a warm area over a leaking hot water, heating or underfloor pipe, while damp can appear as a cool one.

Tracer gas

Tracer gas follows the leak's own route to the surface: the pipe is emptied and closed off, filled from a cylinder with 5% hydrogen in 95% nitrogen, and a hydrogen detector carried over the floor or ground gives its strongest signal where the gas breaks through.

Pressure testing

Pressure testing closes off a system, or one part of it, brings it up to pressure and reads the gauge over a set period; a part that loses pressure in that time normally has a leak in it.

Moisture mapping

Moisture mapping builds a picture of the wetting: readings taken on an even grid over a wall, floor or ceiling show how far the water has reached and where it is wettest.

Which counties does Red Rose Leak Detection cover?

Red Rose Leak Detection covers Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Lancashire, Cheshire and Cumbria, across 260 postcode districts.

Five towns have pages of their own, each describing that town's homes, its water supply and the districts it takes in.

• Leak detection in ManchesterManchester and Salford
• Leak detection in LiverpoolLiverpool, Bootle and Prescot
• Leak detection in BoltonBolton and Bury
• Leak detection in PrestonPreston, Chorley and Leyland
• Leak detection in ChesterChester and Ellesmere Port

Every covered district, listed by post town and district code, is on the page for coverage by town and postcode district, together with the water company that supplies each part of the region.