Outside service pipe

[Kieren]

Hi,

We live in a rural area where our service pipe runs from the road under two fields and into our house. In April a section of the pipe sprang a leak which I had a company out to fix, south west water paid £100 and i paid the princely sum of £400....

Anyway we have just been told by our neighbour that it looks like the pipe is leaking again from a new location.

What i'd like to know is how difficult it would be for me to fix. The pipe isn't deep maybe a couple of feet, the last time the company got a digger but it was like the somme so I couldn't blame them for that.

I was thinking of digging down, having a look at the pipe, seeing how big the hole/leak is, measuring the pipe, cutting out the affected area and fitting a compression coupler joining the 2 pipes back together.

Does that seem reasonable? I figure that at the very least i would have saved a bit of time by digging the hole for them. If I went ahead what tools do you think I would need, save shovel and coupler.

Many thanks.

 

[rpm]

Consider, is it a shared pipe and is the leak on your land?

 

[snowhead]

The hardest thing is finding the exact location of the pipe.
It's not always directly below the leak.
You may have a bit of digging to do.

 

[ToolGuy]

Is it metal or plastic pipe? Could a pinger be attached at the end for use with a pipe tracer? Specialist pipe tracing equipment can be hired or if metal maybe a simple metal detector might help in finding the pipe.

If it comes to replacing a lot of length need to be sure their aren't other services next to the water pipe. Moling might be cheaper than digging, at least check out.