A leak­ing tap, drip­ping one drop every two seconds, can waste more than 2 500 litres of water annu­ally. Many leaks in an aver­age home go undetec­ted, res­ult­ing in increased costs for homeown­ers and a massive deple­tion in water sup­plies globally.

Inventor John Curry with the little device sav­ing a whole lot of water.

Accord­ing to John Halsall, Dir­ector of Water Ser­vice at Thames Water, the largest UK water com­pany, “up to a quarter of all leak­age [in the Thames Water sup­ply area] — around 170 mil­lion litres a day — is actu­ally from pipe work belong­ing to customers.”

In 2006 Thames Water employ­ees inven­ted a new water-saving device called the Leak­frog. This simple little device, used in the homes of some of the company’s 8 mil­lion cus­tom­ers over the last four years, has con­trib­uted to a 20 per­cent decline in water wasted via leak­ing pipes.

In this situ­ation – as is often the case – the con­ser­va­tion solu­tion was not as com­plic­ated as it may have first appeared. The small, simple mech­an­ism can be attached to any household’s water main.

When left overnight, it determ­ines if water loss is tak­ing place on the prop­erty, provid­ing homeown­ers with an easy iden­ti­fic­a­tion sys­tem. Thames Water offers free leak repairs and sub­sid­ised pipe replace­ment for homeown­ers who detect leaks to rea­pir the leak effi­ciently — sav­ing money and resources in the long term.

Drip­ping tap by Sat­sueisha on Flickr

The Leak­frog may not have made it’s way to your house just yet, you can detect leaks DIY-style:

1. Add a small amount of food col­our­ing to the toi­let cistern. If the col­our shows up in the bowl dur­ing a period when the toi­let is not flushed, unwanted seep­age is occurring.
2. Reg­u­larly check inside cup­boards con­tain­ing plumb­ing and under sinks for water pud­dling.
3. Mon­itor the water meter by shut­ting off all water sup­plies and check­ing it before leav­ing the house, if the water levels are raised upon return there is a leak present.