Heating engineers are often asked to identify and fix leaking hot water pipes. When these potential leaks are located beneath tiled or concrete flooring, this results in the extremely time-consuming and laborious task of trying to identify the location of the leak, including digging out large sections of the floor to uncover the problem.

A thermal imager can help to identify problem areas almost straight away, without the additional issue of extensive, unnecessary damage to the customer’s property.

In order to locate a leak in the heating system pipework, the first task is to trace where the pipes run. The time for this can be considerably reduced by using a thermal imager from Testo:

• The surface to be inspected is reduced to the relevant area.
• Thanks to the good visibility in the thermal image, the course of the pipe can be detected very easily and conveniently (cf. adjacent image).

Once the thermal imager has established the pipework runs, efforts can be focused on locating the leak.

The images on the right depict the thermal survey of a glazed walkway between a lounge and kitchen extension. The homeowner is complaining of a possible water leak under the tiled floor.

The thermal image shows the heat pattern effect from the heating pipes running under the walkway. At one point they clearly exhibit increased temperature concentration. This hot spot indicates a possible leak from the central heating system. Leaks are usually identifiable by an irregular-shaped hot spot.

These thermal images identified the leak‘s possible location on the heating system pipework, and further investigation revealed that there was indeed a leak at this point.