Three Numbers We Looked For and Will Not Print

A detection success rate

Leak location is marketed on accuracy: found first time, located to within inches, no unnecessary excavation. We found no independent source publishing a success rate for acoustic location on residential supply pipe, and the figures that circulate trace back to firms describing their own work.

So no page here states one. What we say instead is what the method physically depends on, which lets you judge whether your own case is a good one for it.

A national price for a leak survey

We do not set prices, we never see them, and the contractors we route to set their own. A national average would therefore be invented, and on a job whose scope depends on pipe material, depth, access and which instrument is appropriate, an invented average would be worse than no figure at all.

What actually moves the number is a more useful page than a made-up range.

An average volume for a hidden leak

Figures of this kind exist and some come from bodies we would be happy to cite. We leave them out because a national average tells you nothing about your own leak, and because the number that matters to you is the one on your own bill next to your own average month — which is also the number the adjustment schemes work from.

Why this page exists at all

Because the alternative is silence, and silence looks the same whether a site checked and found nothing or never checked. A reader who can see which questions we declined to answer can calibrate the ones we did.

• Your bill
• What listening finds
• Cost