Water leak fun…

Mike, our nearest neighbour, told us that he thought we had a water leak in one of the fields near the house.  He was right and yesterday we began digging to find it.  Luckily we found the pipe pretty quickly and traced along the pipe to find the leak.  It was covered over with an old dumpy bag, and underneath was a previous repair… a length of pipe inserted into the line with a pair of fairly new plastic pressure connectors, one of which was squirting water.

The next challenge was to find the stop cock/water meter.  We found that and shut it off… still water squirting from the joint, but no water at the house.  I decided that maybe the squirting was just residual pressure in the pipe.  I undid the joint… mains pressure and lots of water!!  After a soaking, I managed to re-connect the joint, but it was now leaking more than before.

 

 

We had been told that there was another water meter across one of the twenty acre fields.  After a hunt we found a couple of water board covers, but no meter and no stop cock.

Debbie called Raymond (previous owner).  He said he “didn’t know anything about a leak” and “didn’t know where the stop cocks were”.  Interesting.  The pipe has clearly been fixed in the last couple of years… never mind.

 

Call made to Mike… who arrived in about 2 minutes and immediately told us where the second stop cock/meter was.  This meter was not turning, but we shut it off anyway.  Water still leaking at mains pressure from the joint.  Given that we can’t find the meter or stop cock, we disconnected the joint again, folded the pipe to stop it running and tied it off.  A temporary stop solution!

Water company sending someone in the next 24 hours to help us find the stop cock… it must be somewhere!