Emergency work
Leak repair in Zeist
A patch that keeps growing, a puddle by the meter cupboard, or a bill that does not add up.
Phone answered
07:00 to 22:00, every day
Travel time
usually 40 to 80 minutes
Call-out charge (voorrijkosten)
€ 25 on top before 08:00, after 18:00 and on Sundays
Problems
How we go about it
What you can do until we arrive. Shut the main valve. It stands beside the water meter in the meter cupboard (meterkast), a narrow built-in cupboard by the front door or under the stairs, and in the older houses here below a hatch in the hall floor. Cut the power to the wet room at the consumer unit in that same cupboard. Then write the meter reading down and take two pictures, one of the damp itself and one of the meter.
What we bring. Thermal camera and moisture meter, pressure testing gear, and press fittings in copper as well as plastic, plus enough stock to make a sound temporary joint. So if the proper repair waits on an ordered part, your water still goes back on that evening.
What finishing the job means here. Nothing is closed up before the repaired run has held test pressure, and you get shown the failed part in your hand. Anything that disappears behind screed, tiles or plasterboard is measured in from two fixed points and written down, so the next visit starts with a tape measure instead of a search. The invoice names the part, the place and the cause, which is the page an insurer asks for.
Two jobs hide inside one phone call, and they get mixed up almost every time. Job one is getting the water to stand still. Job two is working out where it came from. Shutting the main valve settles job one and nothing else, which is fine: that is all that has to happen before somebody is at your door.
Zeist sits on the sand ridge of the Utrechtse Heuvelrug, high and free-draining, with the water table a long way down. That single fact rules a suspect out. Damp under a floor or in the crawl space (kruipruimte) here is a pipe or condensation on cold concrete; it is hardly ever the ground water that causes the same symptom in the peat and clay polders a few kilometres west. Naming which of the two you have is the difference between an afternoon of chasing out floors and an afternoon of fitting a vent.
Our first move is a thermal camera, a moisture meter and valves: shut off one branch at a time, watch what the readings do, and mark the spot before anything is opened. Houses built here after the war carry the hot water in the floor screed (dekvloer), a poured sand-cement layer with the pipes lying in it, and warm water in a cold slab draws itself on a thermal image to roughly half a metre. The pre-war villas towards the Lyceumkwartier are a different animal: there the failure is usually a leftover length of galvanised steel (verzinkt staal) or lead sitting between the meter and the first tap.
Once we can name the broken part, you get the price for putting it right before any tool goes near it.
Can this wait until tomorrow?
Then there is no reason to sit in a queue. Put your number in the form with a line about what is going on, and the call back comes at an hour you name yourself. Write it in English.
Amounts
What it costs
One set of figures for the whole site. No emergency tariff exists that waits until somebody is standing in your hallway to introduce itself.
All rates and how time is counted
If the job takes longer than estimated.
On the doorstep you are told what looks necessary and roughly what that comes to. Should the job turn out bigger, you hear it while the panel is still off, not two weeks later on paper. Nothing past € 400 happens until you have said yes to it.
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Call-out charge | € 45 |
| Hourly rate | € 65 to € 85 |
| Out-of-hours surcharge | € 25 |
| After the first hour | per 15 min |
| Parts | separate |
One call-out charge covers the visit. Tap and sanitary work bill at the lower hourly figure; jetting, camera work and boilers at the higher one. A flat amount joins the bill before 08:00, after 18:00 and on Sundays, never a percentage of anything. Quarter hours are counted after the first hour, and every part gets its own line.
What matters here
Background
The hardest leak in this municipality is the one you cannot see at all. Bosch en Duin, Austerlitz and the outer edge of Den Dolder are plots measured in the thousands of square metres, and on a plot like that the water meter can stand dozens of metres from the front door. Dutch law draws the line at the meter: everything on the house side of it belongs to the owner, buried supply pipe included. When that pipe splits, the sand swallows the water. No puddle, no damp wall, no hiss. The meter dial is the only witness.
Reading that witness takes ten minutes and costs nothing, so do it before you call anyone. Close every tap in the house, write down the figure on the water meter, and look again an hour later. A figure that has moved means water is escaping past the meter. Now close the main valve inside the house and repeat the hour. Meter frozen: the leak is indoors, and a cistern quietly refilling itself is the usual culprit. Meter still creeping: the loss is out in the buried pipe across your own land, and that pipe is yours to repair.
Indoors, galvanised steel is the standing champion. It was the default here until roughly 1980 and it corrodes from the bore outwards, so the pressure upstairs drops off first and a pinhole opens later at the thinnest point. Clamping that pinhole buys weeks, not years, because every other metre of that pipe is the same age and in the same condition. The honest repair is to take the run out and put copper or plastic back, and that run is then done with.
A fourth cause belongs to the deep cellars under the older villas on this side of town. Sump pumps and non-return valves stand idle through dry years, seize, and are discovered during the first serious downpour, by which time there is water in a room with no way out of it. Testing one takes a bucket and two minutes.
Where we come for this
- Plumber in Zeist (30 to 60 minutes)
- Plumber in Den Dolder (35 to 70 minutes)
- Plumber in Austerlitz (40 to 80 minutes)
- Plumber in Bosch en Duin (35 to 70 minutes)
Not sure whether this counts as an emergency?
Water standing on a floor, nothing working at all, a drain backing up over the rim: ring. Anything that can stay as it is until tomorrow can go through the form, and it will be at the top of the list early in the morning.
Does the floor have to come up to find it?
Rarely. Hot water in a screed floor betrays itself on a thermal image to about half a metre, and cold water is narrowed down by isolating and pressure testing one branch at a time. If it does turn out that something has to be opened, you are told beforehand where the hole goes, how wide it needs to be and what it costs. Retiling or replastering afterwards is a separate trade and a separate bill; we say that in advance rather than assume it.
Every tap is shut and the water meter is still turning. Where is that going?
Somewhere past the meter, which may be indoors or outdoors. Shut the main valve in the house and watch the dial again. If it stops, the loss is inside, and a toilet refilling itself accounts for most of those. If it keeps turning, the loss is in the buried supply across your own ground. On the large plots in Bosch en Duin and around Den Dolder that is a genuine possibility, and there will be nothing to see on the surface, because this sand drains too well to show you anything.
Does insurance pay for this?
Dutch home policies (opstalverzekering for the building, inboedelverzekering for the contents) generally pay for the damage the water did, while the pipe that failed is often excluded. Your policy is between you and your insurer and we will not read it for you, but you will hold an invoice naming the failed part, its position and its replacement, and that is the sheet the claims handler wants. Renting? Send it to the landlord and leave your own insurer out of it.
It has stopped dripping. Do I still need someone?
Yes. A leak that goes quiet on its own is nearly always one that only opens under full pressure or only when hot water runs through it. It will start again, and it will pick a week when nobody is home. That is exactly how a fifty-euro joint turns into a floor.
The other problems we fix
Not urgent
Leave us your number
This is for anything that can keep until tomorrow. Standing water, or nothing working at all, belongs on the phone instead: nobody watches this form all evening. English is fine.