Commercial Leak Detection Specialists

A leak in a commercial building is a business problem before it is a plumbing problem. The Association of British Insurers has reported that escape of water claims cost insurers around £1.8 million every day, and commercial claims sit at the expensive end of that figure because the water damage comes with closed rooms, lost trade and disrupted tenants attached.

We have spent more than 30 years finding leaks across Cornwall and Devon, in buildings ranging from harbourside hotels to school boiler houses. The job is always the same: locate the leak precisely, without opening up floors or walls on a hunch, so the repair touches one small area and the rest of the site keeps operating.

You get a fixed price agreed before we travel, no call-out fees, and a written report your insurer or managing agent can act on.

🏨 Sectors we serve across Cornwall and Devon

The South West runs on hospitality, tourism and education, and each sector has its own version of the same nightmare: a leak nobody can find, in a building that cannot simply shut. These are the premises we are called to most:

Landlords and letting agents with scattered residential portfolios get the same service: one point of contact, one report format, every property documented the same way.

💷 Why commercial leaks cost more than domestic ones

In a house, a leak costs you a repair and some redecorating. In a commercial building, the meter is running twice: once on the water and once on the business.

Business premises are metered, so every litre escaping under the car park is on your next bill. But the bigger number is usually interruption. A leaking riser can close a floor of bedrooms in peak season. A damp classroom comes out of timetable. A ceiling stain above a shop floor becomes a slip risk and an insurance question at the same time. Escape of water is one of the most common and most expensive classes of property claim in the UK, which is exactly why the ABI ran a national campaign on it.

The arithmetic favours early detection every time. A precise location found in one visit means one small access point, a shorter drying period, a quicker repair and a cleaner claim. A leak left to wander through the building fabric for months means the opposite of all four.

🕓 How we work around your operations

Most of our commercial work is shaped by one instruction from the client: do not stop the business. So we plan every survey around how the site actually runs.

That means early-morning starts before a shop opens, evening surveys after a restaurant closes its kitchen, school work booked into half terms and holidays, and out-of-hours visits by arrangement for offices where tenants need notice. Our detection methods are non-destructive and quiet, so in most buildings staff and guests simply do not notice the survey happening.

Where a system has to be tested, we isolate it section by section rather than shutting the whole building down, so kitchens, bathrooms and heating stay in service everywhere except the small zone under test. The price is fixed before we set off, and there is no call-out fee.

🔍 Detection methods built for large sites

Big buildings defeat guesswork. Long pipe runs, multiple supplies, plant rooms and buried services mean the leak is rarely anywhere near the damp patch. We bring the full toolkit to every commercial job and choose the combination the site needs:

Leak correlators and acoustic listening

On long runs, the kind that feed a holiday park or cross a school site, we place sensors at two points on the pipe and the correlator calculates the leak position from the time the leak noise takes to reach each one. Ground microphones then confirm the exact spot through tarmac, concrete or screed. More on our acoustic leak detection service.

Tracer gas

For buried or stubborn leaks we charge the pipe with the industry standard tracer gas, a mix of 5 per cent hydrogen in 95 per cent nitrogen. It is non flammable and safe in use, and the hydrogen escapes through the leak and rises through soil and concrete to a detector at the surface. Ideal for car parks, courtyards and slab floors. See tracer gas leak detection for the full method.

Thermal imaging

Our FLIR cameras read the surface temperature patterns that escaping water creates, which makes them especially effective on heating circuits, underfloor heating and hot water distribution in larger buildings. Nothing is lifted or opened to take the images. How it works: thermal imaging leak detection.

Moisture mapping

Digital moisture meters let us map how far the water has travelled through the building fabric and trace it back to source. The readings go straight into your report as evidence for the insurer and a drying baseline for any restoration contractor.

🚧 Who is responsible for the supply pipe at business premises?

A question we answer weekly. Ofwat’s guidance is clear: the supply pipe that runs from the boundary of the property into the building is the property owner’s responsibility, and that applies to non-household premises just as it does to homes. The water company maintains the main in the road; everything on your side of the boundary stop valve is yours, including leaks on it.

For businesses in England there is an extra wrinkle: since April 2017 eligible non-household premises buy billing and meter reading from a licensed water retailer, while the regional wholesaler looks after the network. Your retailer sends the bill, but a leak on your private supply pipe is still your problem to find and fix. Our guide to who is responsible for a water leak breaks down the boundary rules in plain English.

🛡️ Insurance reports and trace and access

Most commercial property and buildings policies include trace and access cover. Broadly, it pays for professionally locating the leak and making good the damage caused by reaching it. It does not always cover repairing the failed pipe itself, and limits vary between policies, so check your wording. Our plain-English guide to what trace and access cover is explains how a claim runs.

Every DCI commercial survey can come with a report written for that process: the leak location, photographs, thermal images, moisture readings and the methods used. Loss adjusters get the evidence they need first time, which keeps the claim moving and keeps you out of the middle.

📋 Planned and preventative checks for portfolios

If you manage more than one building, the cheapest leak is the one found before it shows. We carry out planned detection surveys for hotels, holiday parks, schools and landlord portfolios: pressure testing of supplies and heating circuits, thermal imaging of known risk areas, acoustic checks on long external runs, and a written condition report per site.

Holiday parks book these before the season opens. Schools book them for the summer break. Portfolio landlords use them to catch the slow leaks that otherwise surface as a tenant complaint in December. Whatever the estate looks like, the survey is scheduled around it, and the findings arrive in one consistent format your team can act on.

New to managing this risk? Our leak detection guide for facilities managers and landlords covers the warning signs, the responsibilities and the first steps to take before you book anyone.