Leak Detection for Loss Adjusters and Insurers: Scope, Report, Fee Basis

An instruction to attend an insured escape of water is a different job from a homeowner asking us to find a leak. The insurer or adjuster is buying evidence: a defensible account of where the water came from, what the failure characteristics indicate about when it started, what had to be opened to prove it, and what that work reasonably cost. This page is the specification. It is written for adjusters, claims handlers, brokers and managing agents deciding what to instruct and what they will receive.

What an Adjuster Is Actually Buying

Four outputs decide whether a detection instruction was worth issuing, and they have to arrive in this order.

The named source comes first, because it fixes the peril. A failed flexible hose beneath a basin, a split on a heating circuit and a perished seal around a shower tray produce indistinguishable damage on the floor below and entirely different claim outcomes. We name the component that failed and its mode of failure, not the room it sits in.

The date characteristics come second. Most escape of water wordings respond to a sudden discharge and exclude gradual deterioration, so whether the failure is days old or months old is frequently the whole claim. We record what supports the finding, including staining pattern, corrosion or scale at the failure point, the condition of adjacent fabric and the distribution of moisture, and we state plainly where the evidence does not permit a conclusion.

Minimum access comes third, and only once the first two are settled. Opening up before the non-invasive survey is complete destroys the evidence the claim rests on, and it is the most common reason we attend a property twice. The written record comes fourth, and it has to be legible to somebody who was never on site.

The Three Instruction Scopes

Most disputes about trace and access cost are really disputes about which of these three scopes was instructed. Stating it on the instruction removes the argument before it starts.

Two boundaries are worth stating on the instruction itself. Repair of the failed component is frequently outside cover, because many wordings treat the defective part as a maintenance cost and respond only to the resulting damage, so it is priced and invoiced on its own line whether or not it proves recoverable. And consumer no find, no fee arrangements do not translate to insurer work: on an insured loss the investigation itself is the deliverable, and a negative result that eliminates plumbing as the source is a useful and chargeable finding.

What We Need in the Instruction

Scoping accurately before attendance is what keeps a single visit single. We ask for:

• The claim or policy reference, and who the report is to be addressed to.
• Property type, construction and floor build-up where known, including whether there is a screed or underfloor heating.
• What is known about the loss and the date it was noticed.
• Whether water is still escaping or the supply has been isolated.
• Whether a drying contractor is already on site or committed.
• Access arrangements and the key-holder position, including any working at height or scaffold requirement.
• Any trace and access limit applying to the policy.
• Which of the three scopes is being instructed.

Where the property is a flat in a block, we also need to know whether the instruction comes from the buildings insurer, the leaseholder or the managing agent, because that determines who the report is addressed to and what may be disclosed to the other parties. On commercial risks, business interruption exposure changes how we prioritise attendance, and should be flagged at the point of instruction.

Methods and the Standards They Are Worked To

Method selection is driven by the system under suspicion and the construction, not by preference. A report that records what a method ruled out is as useful to a file as one that records what it found.

Acoustic detection and correlation

Ground microphones and leak noise correlators locate escaping water on pressurised supply pipework by the sound it makes passing a breach. It is the first choice on mains and supply runs and it degrades on low-pressure and gravity systems, on plastic pipe and in noisy environments, all of which we state in the report rather than leaving implicit. See acoustic leak detection for the equipment used.

Thermal imaging and moisture mapping

Thermal imaging reads surface temperature differentials, so it locates heating leaks and evaporative cooling well and cannot see through a floor. It is paired with non-invasive moisture meters for indicative readings and with pin or resistance meters for quantitative ones, and the two are reported separately because they are not comparable. Known false positives, including underfloor heating loops, solar gain, thermal bridging and recently cleaned floors, are ruled out on site and the method noted. Details are on our thermal imaging page.

Tracer gas and pressure testing

Where acoustics cannot help, an inert tracer gas introduced into an isolated and drained section will escape through the smallest breach and be picked up at the surface by a sniffer probe. It is the definitive method on underfloor heating and low-pressure circuits. Pressure testing runs alongside it, and the report states the pressure applied, the hold duration and the observed drop rather than the word failed. Our tracer gas detection page describes the procedure.

Regulatory compliance on the work itself

Any fitting or material we introduce into the wholesome water supply falls under the Water Supply (Water Fittings) Regulations 1999, which prohibit materials that cause or are likely to cause contamination of the water. Approval under the Water Regulations Approval Scheme is the recognised route to evidencing compliance, and it applies to test equipment connections as much as to a permanent repair. On external supply pipework, BS EN 805, the British Standard for water supply requirements for systems and components outside buildings, governs testing and commissioning, and we work pressure testing on service pipes to it. Stating which standard applied to which operation is what allows a third party to review the work a year later.

What a Defensible Report Contains

A report an adjuster can rely on states the methodology, the readings, the location of the source and the dates on which each step happened. If a reviewer three months later cannot reconstruct what was done and when, the report has failed however good the fieldwork was. Every report we issue on an insured loss carries the following.

The chain of dates is the element most often missing from reports we are asked to comment on. Date of discovery, date of isolation, date of instruction, date of attendance, date of report. Where those dates are inconsistent with the physical evidence we say so in the report rather than leaving a reviewer to notice it later.

Evidencing the Tests the Claim Will Face

A report is written against the arguments a claim will actually meet. Two of those are worth naming explicitly, because the Financial Ombudsman Service has published guidance on both.

On gradual damage, the ombudsman's guidance indicates it will normally require an insurer to pay where the damage was caused by an insured event such as escape of water, the policyholder could not reasonably have been aware of it happening gradually because it was concealed, and they acted as soon as they reasonably could have known. Each of those limbs is evidential. Concealment is established by describing the build-up and the pipe route. Awareness is addressed by the moisture distribution and the condition of finishes. Timing is addressed by the chain of dates and by the physical condition of the failure point. A report that engages with those three limbs directly is materially harder to displace than one that simply names a pipe.

On underground pipes, the ombudsman's guidance to businesses makes two points that bear on scope. Damage is not confined to physical damage and extends to loss of function, and an insurer may need to make good excavation damage caused during investigation even where the claim is ultimately declined. Both affect how an underground instruction is scoped and how the invoice is structured, and we flag the position before excavation rather than after. Where the loss originates outside the building line our escape of water claims guide covers how the peril is read.

Fee Basis and the Trace and Access Limit

We do not publish a rate card, because a rate quoted without sight of the building is a number that does not survive contact with it. What we do publish is the basis, which is what actually allows an adjuster to reserve.

How the fee is structured

Work is priced either as a fixed fee or on time and materials. A fixed fee suits a defined survey at a single property where the systems and access are known, and gives both the adjuster a reserve figure and the policyholder certainty. Time and materials suits open-ended investigations: multiple candidate sources, large or complex buildings, communal risers serving several demises, or losses where a first attendance is expected to narrow the field rather than close it. On that basis we agree a not-to-exceed figure and revert before approaching it.

Three things are charged separately and always appear as separate invoice lines:

• Attendance and survey, including the standard written report.
• Controlled opening-up and its reinstatement, which is the line mapping onto the trace and access clause.
• Repair of the failed component, kept separate because it is frequently outside cover.

Where an insurer requires a particular template, portal submission or supplementary schedule beyond our normal report format, that is quoted before it is produced rather than appearing unannounced. A second attendance is chargeable where it is caused by something outside our control: access unavailable, the system not isolated, or opening-up carried out by others after our survey.

Checking the limit before work starts

The trace and access limit is a monetary cap on the cost of finding the leak and making good the damage caused by that search, and published UK wordings treat it very differently. Some state a figure. Some promise reasonable costs without publishing one. Some extend to repairing the source and some pointedly do not. It needs checking on the schedule before work is authorised rather than after, and where our estimate approaches it we say so in writing so that authority can be extended or the scope restricted. Our trace and access page sets out how invoices are structured to sit inside that clause cleanly.

Turnaround, Surge and Working Alongside Drying

Standard turnaround is attendance within an agreed window with the located source confirmed verbally on the day, so that isolation and drying can begin without waiting for the document, and the written report following shortly after. Surge behaves differently. A hard freeze followed by a thaw generates volume no detection provider absorbs at normal turnaround, and the honest position is to state the current window rather than accept everything and slip. During surge we prioritise by whether water is still escaping, whether the property is occupied, whether more than one demise is affected, and whether a drying contractor is waiting on a source confirmation.

Detection and drying are separate disciplines and separate invoices, and they overlap in one place: moisture readings. Left unmanaged, both parties record moisture, both charge for it, and the file receives two sets of figures taken on different instruments that disagree. The workable division is that detection establishes the source and the extent of wetting at a point in time, which is the baseline, and drying owns the moisture record from that point forward. We do not re-monitor a property a drying contractor is monitoring, and we check what has already been opened for airflow access before quoting, so that work does not reappear on a detection invoice as trace and access.

Sequence matters as much as division. Equipment installed before the source is isolated runs against an active leak, which extends the drying period, inflates the equipment charge and produces a monitoring record that never converges. Where a drying contractor reaches site first, the first thing we establish is whether the supply was genuinely isolated or merely turned down. To instruct us, send the claim reference, property details, what is known about the loss, any applicable limit and the scope required, through our contact page. We confirm scope and fee basis in writing before attendance.