Sunny Rock Close, a property administered by JH Isaacs Properties, had a leak in a 42mm high density polyethylene (HDPE) pipe running beneath the slab of one of the mini-factories on the site.

Gauché Gouws, a utility location specialist and leak detector was called in to try to locate a leak that several other professionals had been unable to pinpoint.

The leak was under the floor slab of a large warehouse. Cast on top of a waterproof plastic membrane, the pipe in question was about 700mm below the slab surface.

Because the pipe was plastic, previous leak detectors had been unable to accurately locate it prior to detection and the plastic sheeting under concrete setup had given gas readings far from the leak itself.

Gauché was able to succeed where others had not because his toolkit had one thing the other detectors didn’t – a Sensors & Software LMX100 ground penetrating radar.

This one piece of kit proved to be the game changer. Gauche used the LMX100 to accurately mark out the location of the pipe beneath the slab.

Knowing the location of the pipe, he could use his Sewerin Acoustic Device to listen for leak noise from the top of the slab.

Having narrowed down the search area considerably the operator could drill a series of small holes through the slab and underlying plastic sheet.

Once tracer gas had been introduced into the water pipe he conducted the gas test.

Because escape holes had been made in the slab he could test hydrogen concentrations above each test hole using a Sewerin gas detector.

The test hole releasing the highest concentration of hydrogen pinpointed the leak location so repairs could be carried out.