Burst pipe, frozen loft
11pm callout, frozen pipe in the loft had split. On site within 40 minutes, leak stopped, replacement section fitted, lagged properly to prevent recurrence.
The customer rang at 11pm on a Tuesday in January. A frozen pipe in the loft had split as it thawed and was bringing water down through the upstairs ceiling. Tom was on site within 40 minutes — mains off at the stopcock, then loft hatch open and into the cold.
Found the split: a 200mm section of 15mm copper that'd been left completely unlagged near the eaves. Standard story for older loft insulation jobs — the rolls get pushed up against the rafters and the cold air channels run right past the pipework.
Cut out the damaged section, fitted a fresh length of copper with two soldered joints (no compression fittings on a buried run, ever), tested under pressure, refilled the system. Whole repair took 90 minutes from front door to packing the toolbox.
The leak had soaked the insulation but luckily not reached the ceiling rose wiring. We dried the area, replaced the insulation with proper pipe-lagged sections around the run, and left the customer with a moisture meter so they could monitor the ceiling staining over the following week. Followed up by phone three days later — all dry.
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