Leak Detection
Everybody writing about hidden leaks writes about finding them. Almost nobody writes about the money your utility may already owe you, or about the deadline quietly running against it.
The essentials
A water meter that moves with every fixture off proves water is leaving your system. Before paying anyone to find it, establish which side of the service connection it is on, because a leak on the utility’s side is usually theirs. Most utilities also run a leak adjustment scheme.
Source: New York City Department of Environmental Protection, Leak Forgiveness Program.
Start with the bill, not the pipe
Most water utilities operate a leak adjustment scheme: fix a hidden leak, show them the evidence, and part of the inflated bill comes back. The terms differ everywhere — New York forgives half with a floor, Oregon City adjusts two months at half the distribution rate — but the shape is the same and so is the catch.
The clock runs from a bill you have already received, not from the day you found out. What these schemes actually say, and why waiting one cycle is the expensive move.
Source: New York City Department of Environmental Protection, Leak Forgiveness Program; City of Oregon City, Oregon, Water Leak Policy and Adjustment Application.
Then establish whose pipe it is
Between the main in the street and your kitchen tap, responsibility changes hands at a point your utility defines. A leak on their side is not your bill and not your excavation.
It is one telephone call to find out and it is free. Ask this before you book anybody.
What listening actually does
Water escaping a pressurized pipe makes a noise, and everything acoustic detection can do follows from that — including the things it cannot. A drain is not pressurized, so a drain leak is silent and needs a camera instead.
Where the method is strong, and where the pipe material limits it.
What we will not tell you
We publish no detection success rate, no national survey price and no average leak volume, because no source we are willing to stand behind publishes any of them. That refusal has its own page, so you can see which questions we declined rather than guessing.
What this service is
We connect homeowners with independent contractors who cover their area, and the contractors pay us when we route them a call. You are never charged. We would rather you rang your utility first and found out the leak was theirs.
The whole site
Check with your water utility first.If the leak is on their side it is not your bill and not your excavation, and that call is free. If it is yours, come back and we will route you to a local contractor who can find it, chosen on the ZIP code you give. We never charge you either way. Nor must it be a leak: whatever the plumbing is doing, this number reaches somebody.
Call (888) 530-1544