How Drain Tracing Helped an Unhappy Landlady

Damp is never a happy outcome. The causes of damp can be varied, but it’s important to know exactly why it’s occurring, because otherwise you can spend large amounts of time and money on the wrong solution.

Drain tracing is a key way of discovering the causes of damp seepage through external walls.

 

The Pub, the Leak and the Unhappy Landlady

Households aren’t the only places to suffer from drainage problems, and with commercial property there can be serious implications in terms of loss of revenue, and even the health and safety of customers and workers.

We were called out to a pub by the brewery that owned it, because there was a very unhappy landlady having to put up with a leak in her laundry room.

It seemed the moisture was coming in through the external walls and, over time, it was causing more and more disruption to the day to day business of running the pub.

Now obviously a leak is distressing for anyone, but for a busy pub it can mean serious inconvenience and, potentially, disaster. Customers can always vote with their feet and go elsewhere. So there was a real need to get to the root of the problem.

 

Dyeing to Find the Source of the Problem

We were on site within 24 hours of the call out. The first thing we discovered was a cracked gully on the external wall of the building.

One of the techniques at our disposal is dye testing, as part of our drain tracing operations. It’s really useful for more complex cases, such as this one involving the leak into the pub laundry room.

Our early investigations revealed that the drain had suffered considerable damage and deterioration over time and was broken in several places. We also discovered a crack in the rest bend of the pipe which was allowing water to leak into the ground.

Finally, we used our dye testing process to confirm exactly where the water was getting in through the external wall of the pub.

 

We excavated, replaced the broken pipework and installed a new gully. Where we couldn’t access the damaged pipe we applied patch liners – these are a great piece of no-dig technology, whereby we can re-line the damaged pipe by creating a lining inside it.

The result: one happy landlady, and one pub ready to dry-out without the customers drying up.

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