Peak Leak Detection received a web enquiry from a customer who had a boiler problem – their boiler had shut off during the night and the family woke up to a freezing cold house with no hot water!! The boiler was giving a fault code indicating low pressure in the boiler and heating system so they called a local plumber who diagnosed a leak on the heating system. The loss of boiler pressure had happened because of a leak on the system which the plumber couldn’t find. The plumber did manage to isolate the combi boiler from the heating circuit which at least allowed the family to have hot water even though the heating was off.

Our engineer arrived on the same day because the customer’s parents were living with them so we had to get the problem sorted ASAP! We went straight into action with a site survey and information gathering from the customer, which in this case turned out to be vital as it turned out they had new flooring laid in the conservatory a few days before the boiler stopped working. If their plumber had asked the right questions he would have had a better chance of finding and fixing the leak.

As the house was quite large and the heating system was also large, we managed to isolate the conservatory where the new flooring had been installed. Sure enough, our leak detection equipment indicated a leak on the underfloor heating system underneath the new wooden flooring.

With the agreement of the customer, we removed some of the flooring in the area indicated by our equipment and found that the screed on top of the underfloor heating pipes was uneven in depth and in some places was extremely thin. A screw from the new flooring had pierced the underfloor heating pipe