About lead
Where does lead come from?
The water that leaves our treatment works and passes through our distribution network is virtually free of lead. However, in some areas, certain pipes might be made of lead. For example, the pipe that takes water to a home and also your internal plumbing.
How lead could affect you
Awareness of lead and its impact on health has increased in recent years. It’s been found to have more of an effect on foetuses and young children. This awareness has led to many campaigns which significantly reduce lead in our environment, such as unleaded petrol and lead-free paints. Therefore, it’s important that we reduce exposure to lead as much as possible, including in our drinking water.
How to check for lead pipes
First things first, do you know when your home was built? If it was built before 1970, you may have lead pipes in your plumbing system.
To check your pipes, it’s best to start where the water supply enters your house. This is typically where your internal stop tap is located (click here to see how to find this).
Lead pipes are normally dark grey in colour, but if gently scraped, shiny silver-coloured marks appear. They’re generally thicker than other metallic pipe materials and are also easier to scratch using a coin. If you're unsure, ask an approved plumber to carry out this check for you.
If your water supply does come through lead pipework, it’s advisable to run the water for a minute before using it for drinking or cooking purposes. In the long term, we would advise you to line or replace any lead pipework.
Replacing your lead supply pipe
What you need to know
If you replace your lead supply pipe, it must comply with the Water Supply (Water Fittings) Regulations 1999. This is the legal duty of the owner, occupier, installer, or plumber to make sure the regulations are met and won’t have an impact on the quality of your water. For more advice on this, please visit Water Regs UK.
The requirements:
- All lead pipework within your property has been relayed and connected from the boundary stop tap to the internal stop tap. If your boundary stop tap is located within your property boundary, your contractor should be able to connect the new pipe to the boundary stop tap using a coupling. If your boundary stop tap is located on the public highway, your contractor may be able to connect if they have a licence to dig. We have more information further down this page.
- If you share a supply pipe with your neighbour(s), their lead pipes must also be replaced. You can find out more about shared supplies.
- The depth of the new pipe should be a minimum of 750mm but no more than 1350mm.
- The excavation is open for a site inspection at both the boundary stop tap and at the point of entry to the property so we can check it meets regulations.
- The new pipe must enter underneath the property’s foundations, be ducted and in most cases insulated. If this isn’t possible, please contact our Network Regulations team.
- The pipe should be laid on and surrounded by soils of a friable nature or free draining materials such as sand or gravel up to a maximum of 250mm above the supply pipe. The rest must be made up of infill to ground level.
Once the work is complete you need to do the following
You can get details of what to do next, by selecting the options below based on what kind of contractor you have used