Water Leak Under a Driveway in Nottingham

A water leak under a driveway is one of the hardest to find by eye. The supply pipe often runs under the drive from the boundary to the house, and water escaping from it tends to drain down into the ground instead of showing on the surface. Often the first sign is a bigger bill, or a meter that keeps turning with everything off.

Finding it through the surface

Leak noise travels through tarmac, concrete and block paving, so a ground microphone can often pick it up from the surface. When the leak is too quiet, usually on plastic pipe, tracer gas does the work. The pipe is filled with a non-flammable 5% hydrogen mix, which rises through soil, paving joints and even tarmac, and a detector finds where it comes out. The spot is marked on the drive before anything is lifted. The methods are covered in full under underground water leak detection.

Lifting as little as possible

On block paving, the blocks over the leak are lifted, kept and relaid after the repair. On tarmac or concrete, a neat square is cut over the leak and patched afterwards. The repair itself goes through that one opening. See water supply pipe repair.

If the pipe is old or lead and needs replacing, moling can pull a new one underneath without lifting the drive at all.