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- Guest house: ceiling drips traced to a shower connection
A guest house shower leak, drips through two ceilings, and a water system that could not be isolated in a day
Water was dripping through two ceilings in a three-storey guest house with a complicated tank-fed system. Thermal imaging and an endoscope led to an electric shower connection on the top floor.
What was happening
The guest house has eight bedrooms over three floors, with a dining room, reception and kitchen. Its water system is unusually complex: four cold-water storage tanks and two hot-water cylinders in the loft, fed by a system boiler. A constant drip was affecting the second-floor bathroom ceiling and the ground-floor dining-room ceiling. The boiler was not losing pressure.
What the engineer did
Pressure testing was attempted, but the external water meter could not be found, so there was no way to tell whether any pressure loss was inside or outside the building, and with so many tanks and cylinders the system could not be fully isolated in one visit. Thermal imaging confirmed a damp area in the third-floor shower. At the owner's request tiles were removed, and an endoscope camera showed moisture coming from the shower area. Cutting into the wet wall exposed a constant drip from the electric shower connection.
What was found
A constant drip at the electric shower connection on the third floor, strongly suspected as the source. Because of the tanks and pipework above it, it could not be confirmed as the only source on the day.
What happened next
ADI recommended isolating the water supply and fully exposing the shower area as a matter of urgency, with the loft tanks and pipework checked if the shower was ruled out. The owner later told ADI that their own plumber had opened up the location marked by our engineer and repaired the leak. That repair was done by the owner's plumber and was not retested by ADI.
If you run a hotel
Older guest houses often run on loft tanks and several cylinders, and a system like that cannot always be isolated in one visit. Knowing where the external meter is before the engineer arrives saves an hour and settles the first question: is the loss inside or outside?
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Weeks from reopening, the hotel's boosted supply to two garden taps lost pressure the moment the pump stopped. We traced it to a failed 25 mm fitting under a garden bank, replaced it and retested.
Detached hotel: a meter that would not stop
A detached hotel was losing an estimated 17 litres of water an hour, and with the stopcock closed the meter stopped, so the loss was inside. A room-by-room inspection found the causes.