UKC

Tapping into the UKC hive mind for DIY/home maintenance advice.

We live in a downstairs maisonette, periodically a damp patch appears on our kitchen ceiling. On good terms with upstairs neighbour who said he pulled out all appliances while running, checked for drips etc, nothing found. This first happened ~9months ago. Very periodically, say every 3-5months the patch appears again.

Anyway, tonight (at 3am of course) appeared again this time larger and with more vigorous dripping, i.e. drip every 2 seconds or so. Neighbour investigates. No appliances running. Nothing to be found apparently. And the dripping stops after a while.

So what to do? Seems like it will be very hard for a plumber to find a leak, when it's not actively leaking... But whatever it is seems very sporadic and so hard to know when to call a plumber. 

Any ideas? 

Also neighbour is a bit tight fisted and reluctant to call in a professional to investigate. On otherwise good terms with him, but how to persuade him to act?

There'll be evidence under the floor. Nothing leaks enough to actually drip through plasterboard but leave no sign. Take photos and video while it is doing it though and tell him he needs to look. Worst case scenario I'd say that you'll lift the floor to look if he pleads poverty. 

Pulling some floorboards takes very little time unless it's a new build with chipoard t+g boarding. If it is those then I think you may find it easier to go in through you ceiling possibly. :-/

My guess is a heating pipe that's leaking when the heatng is on or possibly a water pipe that leaks if the mains pressure changes. 

My 2p at any rate. 

Are sure it's not rain? We had a periodic leak that turned out to be rain, but only when wind direction was just right and it appeared at that point because of the way the water rain inside the walls.

I've had exactly the same in the old house I live in, twice, and both times the leak was from an upstairs toilet cistern, or rather from the water entry pipe (which contains water under pressure) going into the bottom of the cistern. The second time was caused by a bad repair by the plumber who repaired the first leak, and was very subtle. He had used a piece of threaded pipe that was slightly on the short side, so that rather few threads were involved in the join. Slight expansion and contraction of the pipe caused sporadic leaking through the threads, i.e., it was only leaking when in contraction or expansion. Such a leak gets worse with time by wearing of the threads. Both times the leaks were not obvious because the water (not much more than a seepage) was going down the back of the outside of the pipe through the floor boards, and then along the surface of the horizontal section of the pipe above the kitchen ceiling and was dripping from there into and through the ceiling tiles.

Is there any correlation with it raining? We had a similar issue to Irk in that in certain conditions rain was getting into the cavity in the walls, running down the inside of the walls but, due to the design of the house around the Manchester skylight, pooling in the dinning room about 5 feet in and dripping from there.

@Those suggesting rain:

Yes that was my theory until the latest incident, as the last few had all happened when raining. There is a balcony for the upstairs flat in-line with the leak, and I believe there is a cantilevered beam running in our roof. So it was  palusible that water was dripping onto that, running along and then dripping through our ceiling some distance from the wall.

The latest incident the dripping was quite localized in time a good day after the last rain, so it doesn't seem likely to me anymore. 

Lifting the floor sounds like a good idea. I haven't actually been upstairs to see what it looks like, but I suspect it's not a pristine new kitchen. However I do remember him mentioning in a previous discussion (i.e. not when he was likely to be thinking about avoiding lifting his floor boards) he said the first floor has a concrete floor. It's a 1950s constuction, with boards on the ground floor. But having tried to drill into the ceiling to fit a light and found something very hard, it sounds possible to me.

To those who managed to diagnose other strange leaks; how did you do it? Sounds like you might end up taking apart a lot of the house. Are there specialist leak hunters, or is any reliable plumber a good first port of call?

DISCLAIMER I'm not a plumber

Our story, we had the same thing, twice, turned out to be from the bath in the bathroom directly above. Water leaked out of the bath overflow, then under the bath & through the floor. A plumber fixed it

Good luck

A good plumber should go a long way towards it as they'll know the 'little things' that it might be.

For example I had something similar (but more obvious frequent leaking.) It turned out the shower only leaked when someone was standing in (pushing down on the floor etc.) So my checks of turning the shower on, flushing the loo etc in the bathroom didn't show anything  until the plumber turned up and said that it might only leak with someone standing in it.

Thanks for the tips everyone. Will get a plumber in.

If the ceiling is damaged already then you have the opportunity to cut a hole and have a look to see where it's coming from. There'll be something to see to give a clue. If there's nothing it probably came through the floor in which case that's still a clue.

First things that come to mind are an intermittent central heating leak (unlikely mid summer unless something disturbs the pipes) or driving rain finding its way in if it correlates with rain perhaps with that running some way along a pipe or wire. As it happened in the middle of the night it's probably not a shower trap, cistern overflow or a draining washer machine. Could be a dribbly tap that doesn't drip but floods the drainer/worktop. Could be a boiler leak. Could be a water pipe that leaks if there's a pressure increase.

Do they have a child or pet and are you sure it's water? Which of your neighbour's rooms is it most likely to be coming from based on where it comes through, kitchen presumably?

There's also the weird stuff it could be like water siphoning out of the electricity supply cable from an underground joint if you live near a hill or running down off the overhead supply. I once stopped in a cottage where the main armoured electricity feed cable at head height dribbled like a leaky hose and I've seen it on an electricity pole at the bottom of the hill near home, the cable emerging from the ground squirts water in heavy rain.

jk

Not if it's solid concrete!

We have a 60s flat, concrete decks on every floor, lovely metal conduits for the wiring.  However, these conduits CAN provide a ...er... conduit for water too.

Tricky tricky prob. Historically, we had leaks moving down and across a number of floors before appearing to humans - hard to diagnose!

Anyone above him? Beside him? May still BE him though!!!"

Go through your insurance. It should have a clause for ‘trace and access’ costs which will cover ripping up floors, as well as damage caused by the leak. 

My house is about 25 years old and I've had a total nightmare with pipe leakages.  First of all a damp patch appears on the ceiling, which may 1) go no further or 2) get worse.  First time one damp patch got worse,  I investigated.  This was really awkward coz the chipboard panels were laid down before the stud walls, so needed to saw through them, avoiding pipes, wires etc.  When I removed the carpet I went 'hmm, why does it look like someone has sawed through the panel before'.  Reason was obvious - the pipes have regularly developed small pin-hole leaks which have been regularly re-placed.  My neighbours went 'tell us about it'....and turns out the naff plumber left flux all over the piping - you can see by the blue corrosion.  Since found out one neighbour, shortly after buying her house, had the whole copper piping replaced.  One of the leaks is so small that I simply placed a plastic pot under the leak and suck up the water using a turkey baster shoved through a wee hole drilled through the flooring.

My guess is you may have similar.

Currently, I have 3 leaks on the go...two have occurred AFTER we got the ceiling re-plastered !!!

Would that normally be part of buildings cover? I don't see anything like that in my contents cover. Buildings is held by the freeholder which will be more time consuming to get hold of... 

Pin holes in copper pipes can also be impurities in the copper, which have rusted through.

Why don't you buy an engineer's endoscope? Then you can drill small holes in the ceiling and have a look around. Machine Mart sell them.

Leaks can be a real bugger to find, water has a habit of moving about. Our shower leaked and the water ran across the floor joists and dripped at the other side of the room.

RE the machine mart endoscopes, I got one and it's bloody rubbish, the quality of the screen is very poor but check out USB cameras on Ebay. If your phone supports it you can get a 6, 8 or 10mm camera with a micro USB plug that uses your phone as the screen for between £5 and £15 depending on the size, far superior quality to the cheap endoscopes. 

Yeah in the buildings, which they have an obligation to give you a copy of at the time of renewal (I’m assuming you pay for it). 

Regardless whether t&a is covered, you should claim on the buildings cover for the damage. Ain’t your fault! 

2-3 times a year.. Put your nose to the ceiling and smell it.

Does it smell of wee? Does it smell of washing powder?

My guess is that it smells of rain :0) and a certain wind direction. Don't underestimate the ability of rain to find a tiny crack and spend ages creeping down and along it.

What you may find is that this would be covered by your buildings insurance though (or your freeholder's building insurance, more likely) - particularly if the construction is concrete and if there is a long term leak then that can cause really expensive problems if left untreated. Worth a call at least..

I have also recently found corroded copper pipes buried in a concrete floor - concrete eventually attacks copper, leading to pinhole leaks - but that would likely be a continual problem rather than occasional.