F&E Tank constantly filling!

[junglejim01]

Ok, so i tied up the ball cock last night (and turned off heating). Overnight the F&E tank has emptied. There was quite a bit or loud gurgling from the rads in the early hours, presumably as water drained out of them a bit too.

So now i'm stuck...we must have a leak except i can't find any water. That's a lot of water to go 'somewhere'!

Any suggestions very welcome.

 

[sooey]

You've answered your own question, you've got a leak. If it isn't on the pipework you can see then it must be on a section you can't.

 

[junglejim01]

So as far as i can tell there are 2 places where pipework disappears. One is down an internal wall. I would have thought any leak here would show itself quite obviously. The other is in a concrete floor (with laminate ontop), which i'm guessing is the most likely suspect. Problem is would there not be some evidence of the leak somewhere visible? Is there a way i can check for sure.

 

[sooey]

The water is going somewhere, it seems too much of a coincidence that your leak has started just as you've had pipes capped on the system. If the pipes that are capped aren't leaking I would suspect that a hidden 'dodgy' joint has been disturbed. Does the pipework which has been capped come off the hidden section?

 

[HERTS P&D]

We can't help you any more, you will need to:

get the builders back
call out a plumber
or post loads of pictures of your pipe work and floor.

Andy

 

[junglejim01]

Thanks Andy, yeah i figured i'd probably exhausted my diy options! Builder's back on Monday so i'm emailing as we speak to see what we can do.

Thanks for everyone's advice though. Really useful.

 

[junglejim01]

Hi, i just wanted to thank everyone for their advice and let you know the outcome in case it can be of use to anyone else...

The plumber arrived this morning and came to the same conclusion as me that having eliminated all other possibilities, the leak must be beneath the concrete floor somewhere. For now he's isolated the downstairs part of the circuit which means i now have upstairs heating and importantly, hot water

The F&E tank is no longer trickling constantly so the problem must have been downstairs although i've calculated that over 100L of water must have leaked out and there's no sign of it whatsoever!

We've decided that rather than the upheaval of digging up the floor etc, the best solution is to re-plumb the downstairs rads with feeds from above which for most is very straightforward. It means a couple of chased grooves into the plaster but fortunately this should be pretty easy. At least with snow on the way I can relax a bit.

Thanks again.

 

[mogget]

Thanks for coming back and telling us the outcome - not so many do!

 

[junglejim01]

Also we haven't gone down this route but i discovered that my home insurance covers me for "Trace & Access" for plumbing leaks...worth knowing before making a mess.

 

[HERTS P&D]

Normally with trace and access the plumber will have 90mins on site to find the leak and fix.

Andy