Leak Detection in Largs

Largs grew as a Clyde resort in the days of the steamers and then the railway, and the town still has the shape that gave it: Victorian villas and terraces up the slope, the promenade and the shops along the front, and blocks of flats along and behind the seafront, a good number built or converted for people retiring to the coast. Family houses fill the streets further up the hill, with Fairlie to the south and Skelmorlie to the north.

In a wet room the whole floor is the shower tray. The tiles sit on a waterproof layer called tanking, which is carried up the walls round the shower, and the floor is laid with a slight fall towards a drain set into it. On the timber floors of older buildings and converted villas, the boards are usually replaced with plywood before it is tanked, and timber moves, so the grout lines and the joint round the drain take the strain. In the newer purpose built blocks the floors are concrete, and there is often no depth to run a waste pipe with any fall, so the drain is very shallow or the shower water is pumped away.

In a block of flats, water that gets past the floor goes down, not across. So the call nearly always comes from the flat below, about a bathroom the caller has never seen, and the testing has to happen upstairs while someone watches the ceiling downstairs. Where the owner above is elderly, unwell or away, getting in can take longer than finding the leak, and the factor or a family member is often the one who arranges it.