Burst pipes and hidden leaks
across Ryde

Because that is where two different ages of plumbing are bolted together. A postwar Ryde house has usually been renovated in stages: a kitchen in one decade, a bathroom in another, an ensuite later again. Each stage replaces pipework as far as the wall and ties into whatever was already there. Those transitions are the weakest points in the whole house, and they are almost always buried behind something. The pipe runs are rarely the problem. The joins between them are.

Easily. Water follows the fall of a slab, a joist or a wall cavity and appears wherever it can escape, which can be metres from the failure. Under a slab it can run a long way before anything shows. The reliable test is the meter, not your eyes: shut every tap and appliance, then watch it for a quarter of an hour. Movement with nothing running means water is going somewhere it should not.

Do the meter test above, and if it is turning, treat it as real. A bill is often the first and only symptom of a leak in a wall cavity or under a slab. It is worth acting on promptly rather than waiting for damage to appear, because by the time it appears you are paying for the water and the repair and whatever the water has been sitting against.

Acoustic equipment listens for the sound of escaping water through the structure, pressure testing isolates which line has lost integrity, and thermal imaging finds the temperature difference a hot water leak leaves behind. Between them we narrow it to a point before anything is cut. In a renovated house that matters twice over, because the failure is usually behind the newest and most expensive finish in the building.

It depends what failed and why. A single mechanical failure, a nail through a pipe, a flexi hose at the end of its life, is bad luck and means nothing about the rest. A failure at a material transition is different, because a house renovated in stages usually has several such transitions all installed at similar times by similar methods. One going is worth having the others looked at rather than waiting for each in turn.

They are one of the most common causes of serious water damage in Australian homes, and they are on a clock. The braided hose under your sink or vanity has a service life of about five to ten years, and when it lets go it does not drip, it releases mains pressure continuously until somebody turns the water off. If you cannot remember replacing yours and the kitchen is more than ten years old, that is a cheap job worth doing before it becomes an expensive one.

An emergency make-safe is $250 to $500. Leak detection runs $300 to $600 depending on how much of the house has to be covered. Repair once located is $400 to $1,200 for most jobs, and the range is wide because access decides it: a leak in an accessible wall and one under a tiled floor are very different pieces of work. Replacing a flexi hose is $150 to $350.