Newbie here. I have dug a hole down to 10cm above the footings where I expected to find a leaking water supply pipe but without success. More digging tomorrow but I thought I might ask here for some guidance from the more experienced. Perhaps the pipe is wandering off in an unexpected direction (digging where the pipe enters the house may help answer that). It is a 1950s house and I am wondering if the pipe might drop down from where it enters the house onto the footings or even into a groove in the footings designed to protect the pipe. Is this likely?
Around the time of your house, the depth of water pipes and drains depended on who was looking at the time, if the clerk of works was elsewhere they went in shallow. If he was around - they could be 18 inches or more. Unlikely that the pipe would run along the length inside the founds. Could try your hand at dowsing ? Just need an old coat hanger and some pipe
I know there are many sceptics out there but I have had much success finding water and drainage pipes using this method - it definitely works for some people.
Was going so suggest dowsing...but you beat me to it! I use a bit of the Earth wire from twin and earth...works a treat...sometimes!!! Ps. also works to find incoming mains electric supply!
Sometimes the quickest way to find a water pipe is to put a garden fork into the ground - twice it has happened, digging to find a pipe, put the digging fork into the ground to pick up a shovel - and there she blows! . Still mains water pressure coming out of the ground is an easy way to clear the soil. Always useful to have a couple of jubilee clips and some plastic nearby just in case
Pipe metal or plastic, if metal hire cat scanner & jenny for a day or half day will make finding pipe a doddle.
Thanks for that. I have dug well below 18" and well below the height of the pipe below ground where it enters the house and the meter in the road. Looking more likely it has headed off in an unexpected direction rather than been buried more deeply than I expected. Will dig accordingly tomorrow. Thanks again and the unexpected exercise is making me shake too much for any dowsing to be effective.
The pipe entering the house and on the external tap is the old thin black imperial plastic stuff but the pipe at the meter and under the boundary wall was copper. I am assuming most of it is plastic but until I can find the wretched stuff I do not know for sure.
Do you know where the stop tap in the street is? The pipe should be in a fairly straight line from there to where it enters the property.
Yes I know where the meter is and the water company dug a hole in the road a couple of days ago to check it was not their responsibility. The copper pipe at the meter pointed directly at where the pipe enters the house which requires it to pass under the boundary wall rather than deviate by 15 degrees and enter via the gate. The boundary wall is an old dry stone wall and is older than the house and so this was unexpected. It gave me confidence that the pipe went in a straight line to where it enters the house but my hole today rather suggests it does not (unless it is unexpectedly deep). Curious.
Plan B, lay a new water pipe, sometimes easier option than trying to trace a pipe. Always expect the unexpected with old houses.
How deep is the meter, might give you some idea as to the depth of the pipe, but I've had a stopcock down 18" in the road, but by the time pipe got to house it was down to 30", was a lot of hand digging. And the pipe here is down 18" in road,but with the sloping garden, at house it comes under a 3' wall, then pipe is another 18" further down.
It is kind of Plan A. My pathetic efforts at digging a hole today were to try to find the T junction between the main supply to the house and the outside tap. If the leak is on the branch to the outside tap then I will blank that branch and do without an external tap. If it is on the main supply I will lay a new pipe probably by hiring someone to "mole" rather than attempting to dig a trench.
Old black pipe can get brittle with age, you repair a leak, then you get another leak elsewhere. How long would new trench be?
It is a little over 18" down at the house and around that at the meter. I dug the hole to around 33" but was wondering if I needed to go a little deeper to be sure.
Yes but hopefully the house will be sold by then. I am currently sorting probate for my mother and noticed that her water bills had been rising over the last couple of years. I think her next 6 monthly bill would have been for about £2000. The trench would be about 25 metres, under a path, an internal wall and 2 large trees.
I've been taking up the driveway over this weekend, replacing the old lead pipe. Hole is about 4 foot down and about 3 foot wide just outside the house, had to core a soil pipe in as a duct. The pipe is being laid alongside a tracer wire, that can be used to find the pipe when the driveway is back down. Not fun doing it by hand, back is in pain. I'll be laying a underground pipe into the chamber for the downstairs WC and some SWA for outside lights while the channel is open.
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