Tracking down a leak

I was called out by a customer who had a very bad leak, he lives in a large mansion block and the leak was going through into the neighbour's flat causing considerable damage.

Over the weekend he had called in another firm of plumbers to solve the problem and they had replaced some leaky washbasin and bath tap connections. Unfortunately that was not the only source of leaks.

I discovered a further leak beind the washing machine in the kitchen. The customer suspected that there might have been a problem there.

However we both felt that there was likely to be something else causing the problem.

Shane (our brilliant and keen trainee plumber who gets all the hard jobs!) had to go in and really dig to find out what was wrong. At first I thought that it might have been the old lead waste pipe that was cracked, but it was not.

When he started to go deeper we could clearly see what the problem was.

It was the old lead hot water pipe (you can see the water coming from it in the picture)

We made a temporary repair, however, we have a difficult challenge to overcome before we can replace the pipe which is to turn off the hot water.

The valve in the building is very old and does not shut off properly.