A leaking lead pipe

Lead pipes.  Most people know that they can be dangerous yet there was a time when they were absolutely everywhere.  And on older homes, there is still a lot of lead piping that homeowners simply don’t know about.  But just the other day one of those home owners found out that they still had a fair bit of lead piping in their home when one of the lead pipes sprung a leak.

In our customers sandstone home in Pollokshields, the hot tap for their bathroom sink runs from the bathroom on the first floor under the floor boards, along the upstairs hall and under the floor of the second bedroom before dropping down behind the wall of the kitchen downstairs and then into the boiler at the back of the house.

They called JSL Plumbing out to their South Side address when they noticed a damp build up on the lower section of wall in their kitchen.

We turned up on time (as we like to do) and immediately got to work.  Using our thermal imaging camera, we were able to begin tracing the course of the water ingress up the wall.  We then found the leak in a section of pipe at the beginning of the second bedroom upstairs.  All of this piping was behind walls and floors so the customer had no idea that it was lead piping.  The cold tap piping had actually already been replaced some years before the current resident moved in but the lead piping had remained for the hot tap.

We fixed the leak which had been caused simply through age fatigue on the lead pipe (it happens) and have provided an estimate to the customer to replace all of the lead piping.  It will be a bit more complicated because it will involve taking up carpet and floor board upstairs and a small panel will have to be cut out in the wall in the kitchen but thankfully, we have so much experience of this kind of ‘plumbing surgery’ that it will cause minimal scarring and can easily be repaired and made invisible to the naked eye.

If you live in Glasgow and you want to replace your existing lead piping with modern piping options, call on one of Glasgow’s top plumbing firms – JSL Plumbing.