Trace and access cover, and how to check whether you have it
Trace and access cover pays the cost of finding a leak and getting to it: the survey, the lifting of a floor or the digging, and making good afterwards. It is not cover for the damage the water did, and it is not cover for repairing the pipe. Those three words are the standard name for it, so the way to find out whether you hold it is to open your buildings policy and search for them. If they are there, the three things worth reading are the limit, whether that limit is per claim or per period, and whether the cover stands alone or applies only alongside a damage claim.
Last reviewed 14 August 2026
The short answer
It pays for finding the leak and getting to it. Not the damage, not the pipe. Search your policy wording for the words "trace and access" and read the limit.
It is the cover most worth knowing about on a leak nobody can see, and the one most people have never heard of, which is an unfortunate combination that this page exists to fix.
How this works in practice
A hidden leak produces a cost before anybody has repaired anything, and it is a cost with no obvious owner: somebody has to work out where the water is coming from, and then get at it.
- The search itself, which on a buried or under-floor leak means a survey rather than a look.
- The access, which is the destructive part: lifting a floor, cutting a wall, excavating a drive or a garden.
- Making good afterwards, which is putting back what had to be removed to reach the pipe.
Trace and access cover is the name given to paying for those three. It exists because the alternative is a policyholder facing a large bill for work that produced nothing except knowing where the problem is, before the actual problem has been touched.
Notice what that means for the order of events. The work trace and access pays for is the work that has to happen FIRST, before a repair can be quoted and often before the extent of the damage is even known. So it is worth establishing whether you hold it early rather than at the point somebody is standing in your kitchen with a floor saw.
It also pays for a specific, named piece of work rather than for an open-ended investigation. the cost of tracing and accessing the leak sets out the methods that work is actually made of, and what each of them can and cannot establish.
What changes the answer
Five things, and all five are in your own documents. This site cannot tell you any of them, and any page that tells you what is typical is guessing on your behalf.
| What to look for | Why it decides things |
|---|---|
| The limit | It is a stated sum, separate from the sum insured on the building. It is the ceiling on what the search and the access can cost you nothing. |
| Per claim, or per period of insurance | A limit that resets each claim and one that is a total for the year behave very differently if you have a second leak. |
| Standalone, or tied to a damage claim | This decides whether you can use it on a leak that has not yet damaged anything, which is the best possible time to find one. |
| The excess, and whose it is | Where a policy sets a separate excess for water, it is larger than the standard one often enough to be worth checking. What matters here is whether it applies to this cover as well as to the damage claim. |
| What happens to the limit if the leak is not found | A search can be done properly and still not locate it. Ask whether an unsuccessful attempt draws on the limit anyway, because if it does, the second attempt starts with less. |
The third row is the one to establish first and the one nobody asks about, because the cover is normally met in the middle of a claim for damage rather than before one. A reader whose meter test has found a real loss with nothing visible yet is in the best position they will ever be in to limit the harm, and whether this cover reaches them there is worth a phone call to find out.
That last row is a question this site only arrived at by reading its own detection pages next to this one. Those pages tell you to ask a supplier what happens if the leak is not found, because it establishes whether you are buying a result or an attempt. Both answers are legitimate. What nobody says is that the same answer has a second consequence here: if you are buying an attempt and your policy is paying for it, an attempt that finds nothing may still have spent part of what you had. Ask both halves of it at once.
And the answer interacts with the other half of this page, because the two are often handled together. how an escape of water claim treats the damage covers the claim this one may or may not be attached to.
Assumptions and sources
Drip Calculator: how much water does a leaking faucet waste?
United States Geological Survey, Water Science School · primary source
- Faucet drip volume, adopted: 0.25 ml
- Faucet drip volume, measured range: 0.2 to 0.33 ml
- Bath tap drip volume: 0.5 ml
- Drips per US gallon: 15140 drips
- Drips per litre: 4000 drips
The pharmacopoeial metric drop, 20 drops to 1 millilitre
United States Pharmacopeia, British Pharmacopoeia and European Pharmacopoeia convention · primary-standard source
- Standard drop volume: 0.05 ml
Tate's law: the weight of a falling drop
Thomas Tate, Philosophical Magazine, 1864, with the later drop-weight literature · primary source
- Drop weight: W = 2 * pi * r * gamma equation
Plumbers shine the spotlight on dripping taps during Water Saving Week
WaterSafe, with Waterwise · untraceable source
- Claimed annual waste from a dripping tap: 5500 litres per year
International Organization of Legal Metrology · primary-standard source
- MPE, accuracy class 2, lower zone Q1 to Q2: 5 %
- MPE, accuracy class 2, upper zone Q2 to Q4: 2 %
- MPE, accuracy class 1, lower zone: 3 %
- MPE, accuracy class 1, upper zone: 1 %
- In-service MPE multiplier: 2 ratio
- Q2 / Q1: 1.6 ratio
- Q4 / Q3: 1.25 ratio
Aquadis+ DN15 and DN20 specification sheet
Itron · manufacturer source
- Q1 minimum flow rate, DN15, Q3 2.5, R160: 15.6 l/h
- Q2 transitional flow rate, DN15, Q3 2.5, R160: 25 l/h
- Q3 permanent flow rate, DN15: 2500 l/h
- Typical starting flow rate, DN15: 0.4 l/h
- Typical starting flow rate, DN20: 2 l/h
- Q1 minimum flow rate, DN20, Q3 4.0, R160: 25 l/h
- Flow rate at which accuracy is within +/- 5%, DN15: 3 l/h
- Flow rate at which accuracy is within +/- 2%, DN15: 5 l/h
- Minimum scale interval, DN15 and DN20: 0.02 l
Water resources 2024 to 2025: analysis of the water industry's annual water resources performance
Environment Agency · primary source
- Household per capita consumption: 136.5 l/person/day
- Household per capita consumption, prior year: 137 l/person/day
- Household per capita consumption, dry-year adjusted: 140.3 l/person/day
- National leakage: 2617 Ml/day
- National leakage as share of water put into supply: 19 %
PR24 common performance commitments: per capita consumption (PCC), version 2.1
Ofwat · primary-standard source
- PCC formula: (measured household consumption + unmeasured household consumption) / total household population l/person/day
Leaky loos, why it's not as simple as faulty flush valves
ech2o, reporting research attributed to Thames Water · secondary source
- Toilets inspected: 58551 toilets
- Toilets found leaking: 4854 toilets
- Prevalence: 8.3 %
- Average residential leak rate: 400 l/day
- Average commercial leak rate: 2100 l/day
- UK-wide average across all WCs, leaking and sound: 20 l/day
- Share of leaking toilets with flush valves rather than siphons: 81 %
Waterwise · untraceable source
- Single leaking toilet: 215 to 400 l/day
- Share of toilets leaking: 5 to 8 %
- UK total from leaking toilets: 400000000 l/day
Methods for Calculation of Evaporation from Swimming Pools and Other Water Surfaces
M. M. Shah, ASHRAE Transactions SE-14-001 · primary source
- Outdoor unoccupied pool evaporation: E0 = (C1 + C2 * u) * (pw - pa) / ifg kg/(m2*h)
- C1, SI: 235 constant
- C2, SI: 206 constant
Location-specific long-term averages, Wisley, Surrey
Met Office · primary source
- Annual mean daily maximum temperature: 15.41 degrees C
- Annual mean daily minimum temperature: 6.66 degrees C
- Annual rainfall: 667.92 mm
- Annual mean wind speed at 10 m: 5.06 knots
Discover Water, the water industry transparency site run with Water UK, Ofwat, CCW, the Drinking Water Inspectorate and Defra · primary source
- Average annual household bill, combined water and sewerage: 639 GBP
- Average annual household bill, water only: 309 GBP
- Average annual household bill, sewerage only: 330 GBP
SI Brochure: The International System of Units (SI), 9th edition (2019), version 4.01, June 2026
Bureau International des Poids et Mesures · primary-standard source
- cubic metre: coherent derived unit of the SI, Table 5 m3
- litre: non-SI unit, Table 8. 1 l = 1 L = 1 dm3 = 10^-3 m3 l or L
- bar: non-SI unit, Table 8. 1 bar = 0.1 MPa = 10^5 Pa bar
Authority URLs for the named entities in content/entities.ts
Various, see per-entity notes · primary source
WC flush volume: three UK instruments, not one
UK Statutory Instruments, Northern Ireland Statutory Rules, and Scottish Water · primary-standard source
- Maximum single flush, all three jurisdictions: 6 litres
- Dual flush, lesser flush maximum: two-thirds of the largest flush volume ratio
- England and Wales transitional maximum, 1 Jul 1999 to 1 Jan 2001: 7.5 litres
Per-event central heating top-up volume, derived
Derived by Q3 from Boyle's law and typical UK domestic expansion vessel specifications · derived source
- Water held in an expansion vessel: V_water = V * (1 - P0 / P), pressures absolute equation
- Typical top-up, 8 l vessel at 1.0 bar pre-charge, 0.5 to 1.5 bar: 1.6 litres
- Typical top-up, 8 l vessel at 0.75 bar pre-charge, 0.5 to 1.5 bar: 2.4 litres
- Typical top-up, 12 l vessel at 1.0 bar pre-charge, 0.8 to 1.5 bar: 2.4 litres
- Typical top-up, 8 l vessel at 1.0 bar pre-charge, 1.2 to 1.5 bar: 0.9 litres
- Realistic range: 0.9 to 2.5 litres
Monodispersed Bubble Generation Using Hydrophobic Orifices: The Extended Tate’s Law
Bo Liu, Hao Zhang and co-authors, ACS Omega 2024, 9(17), 18854 to 18861 · primary source
No policy has been read for this site, so nothing here counts how common this cover is, states a typical limit, or lists what is usually excluded. Those would be claims about a market nobody here has surveyed. What the page does describe is the shape of the cover, which is a description of the product rather than a tally, and every question it raises is one for your own documents.
What is stated with confidence is narrower and safer: that "trace and access" is the standard name, so it is a phrase you can search a document for, and that the cover addresses the search and the access rather than the damage or the repair. Both are facts about how the cover is described rather than about what any insurer does.
If your policy uses different words for it, that is worth knowing and worth telling us. A standard name that turns out not to be universal is exactly the kind of thing this site would rather correct than defend.
What to do next
Three things, and the first takes about a minute.
- Search your buildings policy wording for "trace and access" and write down what you find, including the limit and whether it is per claim or per period.
- Establish whether it stands alone or needs a damage claim alongside it. If the wording is not clear, that is the question to put to your insurer, and it is a better question than asking whether you are covered in general.
- Find out which side of the building the leak is on before either conversation, because a buried supply pipe and a pipe under a floor are different questions for your insurer and for your water company.
What this cover does not settle, even where you hold it, is the repair of the pipe and the damage to the building. Those are two other questions with two other answers, and confusing any of the three with the others is the commonest way people end up disappointed by a policy that was doing what it said.
Common questions
- What does it actually pay for?
- The work of locating the leak and reaching it, which on a leak nobody can see is a real cost in its own right. A survey to find it, lifting a floor or excavating a garden to get at it, and putting back what had to be taken up. On a buried supply pipe, that work can cost more than mending the pipe does.
- How do I check whether I have it?
- Open your buildings policy wording, not the certificate or the schedule summary, and search the document for "trace and access". The phrase is standardised, so if the cover is there it will be named that way. What varies is what sits around it, which is why finding the words is only the first step.
- What should I read once I have found it?
- Three things. The limit, which is a stated sum separate from the sum insured on the building. Whether that limit applies per claim or per period of insurance. And whether the cover operates on its own or only as part of a claim for damage, which decides whether you can use it for a leak that has not damaged anything yet.
- Does it cover repairing the pipe?
- No. Trace and access is the search and the access, and the repair of the failed pipe is a separate question with a different and usually less welcome answer. Keeping those two apart is most of the reason this page exists.
- My leak has not damaged anything. Can I still use it?
- That depends on whether your cover stands alone or is tied to a damage claim, and it is the single most useful thing to establish, because the two answers put you in completely different positions. If it stands alone, you may be able to have the leak found before it does any harm. If it is tied to a claim, you are waiting for damage in order to get help finding the thing causing it.