leaks

The most common water leaks often found are mainly caused by badly adjusted or worn out float valves in the cisterns of toilets silently flowing into the toilet bowl, which are often left unchecked year after year.

Pipe bursts and leaking pipes are less common, except during prolonged spells of cold weather when temperatures fall below minus 5 and more widespread when below minus 10 degrees.  See frost .

Long term water leaks and minor water seepage often found in toilets can vary from as much as 100 litres up to 6,000 litres per day.  Even when thousands of litres per day are being lost through toilets, the symptoms are often difficult to notice and even when found are not perceived to be much of a problem.

The main problem with long term water leaks means that household water use of 250 litres per day for the average family, can easily become ten fold this level and therefore water metering and water billing can then rise dramatically.  The national figures list 400 litres per day per household including leaks.

The cost of running water softeners to keep up with added leaks mean that salt use can rise markedly.  Only metered water softeners will compensate for water usage or water leakage variations although they cannot register flows or leaks below one litre per minute which can add up to 1400 litres per day.

If a water softener seems to soften on an irregular basis, then the cause is usually a minor water leak.  When metered water softeners start using much higher levels of salt, then it is usually a water leak over 1 litre per minute.  Multiple toilet leaks can occur at the same time, so careful checks are required.

The best methods to check for toilet leaks is either to pour some food colouring into the top of the toilet cistern and watch to see if the colour starts to seep down into the bowl below, or get some dry tissue and place the tissue at the back of the bowl to see if it gets wet.