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Leak Detection

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NEED A PLUMBER? WE’RE IN YOUR TERRITORY!

 


 

Superstar Plumbdog James sniffs out a water leak

See the amount of water being wasted from one small burst pipe

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Superstar Plumbdog James makes his debut on our YouTube channel on the job today at a property in Willetton sniffing out and fixing a water leak.

 

Leak Detection Gear

It’s one thing to have all the gear, but it’s another to have every idea how to use it. James makes it look too easy but that’s only because he has the nose for this type of thing and he’s also been doing this for a long time. Being top dogs when it comes to water leak detection keeps our tails wagging because it means we get the job done without wasting time which in turn saves our customers money.

The Leaking Pipe

Some leaking pipes are obvious when you can hear the water leaking, where some are more discreet with our customers only suspecting a leak because of increased water bills. We’ve shared videos on how to tell if you have a water leak by some simple tests but watch the video to see how much water is wasted from a small burst pipe.

Did you know you could get some money back?

In Perth, Western Australia, there are circumstances where you could qualify for a rebate if you have a water leak. There are some conditions to be met but most importantly, the works need to be completed or verified by a licensed plumber. Our Plumbdogs are licensed plumbers and part of the service we offer for those eligible is to complete the submission on behalf of our customers to the Water Corp to help get some money back!

When it comes to water leak detection and repairs, we have the nose and skills to sniff out and fix any plumbing issues. If you’re in the Greater Perth, give us a whistle!

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Leak Detection

Hello everyone, it’s Richard at Plumbdog here!

I wanted to do a short video just to show you guys how to check for water leaks. It’s early October here in Perth, Western Australia. We’re in a suburb called Como and as you can see from the sky, the sun is starting to shine, and officially we can turn Retic on at the start of spring. Personally, I like to leave it until a bit later because it’s still been quite rainy, but I’m just going to walk you through the sequence of events of how to turn your Retic on.

If you’re turning your Retic on for the first time this spring, it’s a good idea to check for water leaks following your first switchover. We find that a lot of people realise that they’ve got water leaks this time of year after turning their Retic on. So rather you know now, than get a very expensive bill in the post from the water corp informing you that you’ve got a leak. It’s going to show you a couple of quick steps that you can do yourself to check for leaks. Now that you’re Retic is presumably back on.

In here, we’ve got the main controller for the Reticulation. I’m just in the garage and as you can see, the dial there is put in the off position. The Retic has been off all winter, so it’s time now to turn the Retic back on. So just to stick with the existing programmes that were in there last year. Just simply turn the Retic setting onto run. That’s basically going to be in line with the settings. There are all different date and time settings to choose from. This property’s Retic days are Thursday and Sunday. We’ve got start times and what have you, so I don’t need to go into that, but basically, now the Retic is on.

With the Retic on, I just come outside to the water metre at the front and I’m just going to lift the cover. As you can see, the numbers at the top which is the reading of the meter that the Water Corp will take for your bills, and then on this type of meter, this needle here that spins around is really the one we’re looking for. It’s on number six at the moment and it doesn’t appear to be moving so I’m pretty confident there are no leaks on that. A good test to do would be to just keep your eye on it and to test for five minutes and then see if the needle moves off number six. If it does, obviously it might indicate that there is a small leak. But basically, one full turn of this needle here is one litre. So if it does move a tiny bit we’re talking about a tiny amount of water. So looking at that it looks like we are good.

Okay, so as you saw, there are no leaks there, but I’m just here with Rhyse and he’s just got a quick idea of something we can show you. We’re going to turn the camera around and you can see Rhyse. Hey Rhyse!

I’m going to run the tap slightly to imitate the leak to give you guys an idea of how much the needle will move in retrospect to how much water is coming out of the tank. So let’s pretend that’s a small leak, and then we’ll go see if the needle is moving around at the meter to give you an idea.
So we’re back at the needle, and with the naked eye, you can’t really even see it moving, but over a five-minute test you might see it move. Rhyse is going to bump it up a little bit, and yeah, you can see it moving a little bit. So hopefully it gives you a bit of an idea of the size of the leak based on the movement of the meter. It’s not a lot of water, and when it is dispersing into the ground or something, it’s not very obvious. It’s pretty easy for it to get away from you.

Alrighty, hopefully that helps. So regardless of whether it’s the time of year when you turn your Retic on, it’s always a good idea to go outside to your water metre. Once everything is off inside the house, just have a quick look and if your needle is moving, it could mean you’ve got a leak. If that’s the case, obviously you know who to call — Rich and Rhyse from Plumbdog!
Alright, thanks for watching, guys. I hope that was helpful and we’ll catch you on the next video. Take care, bye.

Don’t forget to hit like and subscribe so you’re notified each time we upload a video.

Leak Detection

Hello everyone it’s Richard at Plumbdog here.

I’m out of the property in Baldivis, Western Australia and I’m in a customer’s bathroom. He has lived here about a year and since he’s moved in he’s noticed all sorts of issues with the moisture around the shower. 

You can see behind me there’s moisture coming through somewhere behind the shower screen here sort of adjacent to the shower taps. 

The shower outlet is up there. So, about a year ago he had the shower regrouted because it was noticeably poor with the grout, so the grout guys came and sort of ripped that out and revamped it but he’s still got moisture problems. The client said he had a plumber out last week who looked at the taps and resurfaced them and just sort of put them back and couldn’t really explain too much so he’s got us out for leak detection.

The first thing I want to do is test the water meter at the water main coming in and I just want to look at the small needle on here and see if there’s any movement so I’m doing a five minute test and see if that needle moves at all.

During a test on the water meter here, I noticed that the needle is moving but it’s moving really really slowly and it’s losing about one litre every four to five minutes, so there is a leak on the main but because that’s inside and it’s just showing signs of sort of damp and moisture inside,  I’m pretty sure there’s not a litre of water lost every four to five minutes inside the house because as you can expect it’d be a swimming pool in there so there is a leak on here somewhere but I don’t think that’s it, so what I’m going to do is, I can see that the reticulation connection is just there, the master valve and the master solenoid. I’m just going to isolate them and then just re-test just to see if that makes any difference.

I’m retesting now and now I’ve isolated the retic and there’s no movement, no movement whatsoever over five minutes so we’re not losing any water which is a good sign but I was hoping to find a little bit of loss somewhere because we know that there’s signs of moisture inside so if it’s not on the water main then it’s not anywhere in the pipe work to the taps.

The next thing to do is to test from the taps to the shower rose because that’s the next place where there could be leaks so we’re going to do a pressure test but the water meters are no longer moving when nothing’s been used in the house. Behind the shower here in the bedroom cupboard you can see the plaster is really flaky directly behind the shower taps. I’m removing the shower rose so that we can get the threaded outlet there in order to test using the pressure gauge.

I’m tightening on the flexi hose to the pressure gauge there, just making it watertight in order for us to test. I opened up the taps in no particular order, a hot one first in this case. Once they’re opened and pressurised close them back up so now we’ll perform a test between the shower taps and the outlet. I’m carrying out this test over five minutes to make sure there’s no drop and in this case there is no drop so there is no leak between the taps and the shower outlet.

I’m just turning off the water main opening the taps back up and leaving them open, observing the pressure and now over five minutes we are testing all the way back from the shower rose, all the way back to the main stop tap. Again, there is no pressure loss detected so there is no leak on the main supply pipe all the way back to the meter. We’ll just open up the main again so the water’s back on. The test is completed so I remove the pressure gauge and release the pressure there,  using thread tape on the thread there and then reattaching the shower rose.

It’s important here, once it’s back on to test for leaks because if there’s any leaks guess where it’s going to go? It’s going to go behind the tiles and make the situation worse. Okay, so the silicon around the spindles there, this should have been done by the previous plumber because when the shower is in use the water can get behind those flanges and behind the tiles. I’m also spraying with soapy water to get rid of that excess silicon and wipe away and as you can see my spray bottle has seen better days – time for a new one.

So that’s my test complete. I’ve done the main test on the meter, got a pressure test on  the shower breach, and I’ve checked the taps. They were previously serviced last week. I think that plumber has actually solved the issue. I think the taps were leaking and they are quite old and I would’ve recommended replacing them so he has serviced them and put them all back together.

I do think that solved the problem but as you saw he hadn’t actually siliconed around the spindles there so with the shower in use, water would have got behind there and made the problem just as bad again. so that’s been done. Some recommendations to the client, or what I think he should do, I think they need to peel off some of that plaster get back to the brick and let it dry and it should dry before they sort of spend any more money on regrouting and what have you and then they can give us a shout if they’ve got continual problems but there’s no leaks on the water main with the retic isolated,  there’s no leaks on the pipe work between the taps and the shower rose, so that’s all good.

 

The grouting and ceiling looks good so I think he’s good to go.  I think the problem has been solved. Thank you for watching – I hope you learned something and we look forward to seeing you on the next video.

Take care guys, see you later!

Hot Water System

Hi everybody, it’s Richard at Plumbdog, so I’ve just come out to a property where the customers just brought me around the back of the house. He’s showing me his hot water system and he’s asked me to come out here and service it. He seems to think it’s working quite hard, he can hear sort of water travelling through and he sort of thinks his water bills are a bit higher than usual.

Before I get started, if the water bills are quite high and you can hear running water this will point in me towards the fact that there might be a bit of a water leak instead of an actual system fault.

I’m going to go out to the front of the property and just going to check if we’re losing any water there. At the water meter, I’m just going to perform a five-minute test and see if it’s moving at all. If the needle moves, there’s a water leak. Every full circle, every time it goes around 360 degrees that’s one litre.

It’s not moving much but it’s definitely moving. You can see that needle is moving – it’s just moving really slowly. If you blink, you’d miss it. This is the reason we do tests over five minutes.

I’m going to a see if I can figure out where that leak might be. I’ll isolate the hot water system first and see if it’s on the hotline or the cold line. I have retested as I’ve isolated the water cold feed into the hot water system to see if it made any difference and it didn’t. That means is that there is a small water leak but it’s on the cold line not the hotline.

This would mean that the job has now transitioned from hot water servicing to leak detection, which are two totally different specialized services of ours. Have a look at the video to determine the next steps utilised to resolve the leak.

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