I apparently have huge leak in my plumbing… somewhere. Best way to trace it down if it’s not visible? My water bills have quadrupled and I’ve gotten notice from the city that it appears I have a significant leak. It says I’m using 13,000 gallons a month and I might actually use 1,500 a month at best.
I’m going to crawl under the house, but if it’s not visible what then?
My house was built in 1956 and the metal pipe serving my residence is original to that time. I also have a bunch of large pine trees in front that could have fractured the line. Do you just dig up the pipe in the yard from the city service line at the edge of the yard running to the house until you find the leak?
If you haven’t seen water dripping, you haven’t seen water damage in your house and you have a crawlspace, that’s where I’d start. Get under there, even just point a flashlight 18g an hour shouldn’t be hard to spot dripping from the floor joists. You’ll probably see a puddle, if nothing else.
Check your water meter. Is it spinning? You have a leak, if it’s not, call the city and ask for help (because you may have a faulty meter or they might have read it wrong).
If you don’t see anything under the house, there’s a chance it’s underground, so the next question is where’s the water meter? If the water meter is in your house, the city may be responsible, but they may also not be if the broken main is under your property.
Anyways, first thing’s first, check under the house and let us know from there. Hopefully it’s just something in the crawlspace and not buried. While I’m sure you could dig it up yourself, Digging 48+ inches (of mud and water), with enough space for you to work in is going to require heavy equipment. It’s probably going to take a plumber, that can call someone with a backhoe. It’s the difference between you spending a week digging the hole and them doing it in 10 minutes.
What else. Oh, where’s your water meter? Is it in your house or at the street? That will actually help a lot. For example, mine is in my house. I could be leaking tons of water under ground and no one would ever know until my front yard blows out.
One last thing. Once you fix it, see if you can get a refund on the expensive bills. Often times they’ll do that as an incentive to fix it and not just ignore things like running toilets or leaky faucets.
It’s something to consider. The OP should check to see if it’s moving, if not, check it against the bill. It could just be a simple mistake, that can be cleared up by taking a picture and emailing it to them or running it down to City Hall (or whoever does the billing).
But my big question is, is it spinning when all the water in the house is turned off?
I had a similar problem ten years ago. The local plumbing supply turned me over to a firm that did acoustic leak detection. They found the leak in a few minutes (for a few hundred $).
They hooked up a microphone to the meter and then the shutoff valve in the house. Comparing the volume of the noise from the leak at each location pinpointed the location.
I’d note 13000 gallons a month isn’t a huge leak. That is under a half gallon per minute.
The most common reason for high water usage is a running toilet.
If it’s a 1956 galvanized line it’s passed do for replacement. If it’s a copper line that’s still pretty old. If you find the issue is a leaking line to you should be looking to replace it completely. A repair will just postpone the problem. I’ve seen people spend more money doing multiple repairs than it would be to just replace everything.
One simple test is to shut the water off to the toilets. Do one at a time because you don’t want anyone touching it while it’s being tested. In an hour look at the tank to see how empty it is.
If it’s leaking bad you can turn the main off for just a minute and when you turn it back on you can hear the bad toilet running even though no one touched it. At least that’s how I realized I had a problem with one once.
We have two acres and this happened to us. We called one of those guys with the acoustic gear. I was petrified about what it was going to cost us, but we got lucky and he found it almost right away. The leak was at the meter itself.
half a gallon a minute is a LOT - the water would be running full time. Modern toilets usually have about 1.6 gallons, (federal mandate) so that would be like a flush every 3 minutes. If you don’t see a swimming pool forming or a serious canyon forming, then I would question that number.
Unless your setup is very weird, the meter is in the house? In many locations, an outdoor meter would mean serious freezing damage to the water line. So if their bills are based on your water meter, a leak between you and the road would not be relevant. If they are using a different criteria (what would that be?) and your meter disagrees with them, then it is between the meter and the road.
But the previous posters are correct. with that level of consumption, you should see the meter moving. If it does not move for minutes or an hour when water is not used, then it’s something intermittent.
Intermittent could be something as silly as a toilet that does not close the valve when flushed - sometimes. However, that’s something you should hear (and if you ignore it, you deserve the water bills - a running toilet is annoying!). Ditto if you’ve been ignoring a streaming tap.
Continuous would be slower, but the procedures listed by previous posters are best. First, determine the rate of flow. I suppose there are more subtle leaks, but toilet is always the first to try. Turn off the toilets and see if any empty out at a significant rate.
If you have a house on a concrete slab (or some other hidden plumbing) a leak with a flow of that rate should be obvious, unless your sump or whatever drains into the sewer drain. Otherwise, your sump pump would be pumping that water somewhere far too often. (But generally, slab houses are above grade and don’t need a sump) Still, a serious leak under ground should create a sinkhole pretty fast, or at least a mushy spot, either where the leak is or where it escapes from under the slab.
Since the OP has a high bill, we know the problem is either in the meter reading, the meter itself, or downstream of the meter. Several folks seem to have overlooked this point.
Despite all the instructions here the first and easiest step is - look at your meter - wherever it’s located. When you know that all your faucets are off and you can’t hear a toilet running, does the meter change over, say, 4 hours or morning-evening of a work day?
Where I live meters are in front yards. The meter and upstream is the city’s responsibility; the line to your house and all downstream are the homeowners responsibility.
1/2 Gallon an hour is a huge leak in an indoor fixture or there should a wet spot in your yard.
I think you are seriously overestimating the impact of a leak of this nature. Yes it is possible for a half gallon a minute leak to have obvious physical impact on the surface. More common however is a half gallon per minute leak is below the soils perc capacity and you see no obvious signs on the surface.
Due to the particularly harsh winter we had in New England I’ve had to replace several lines between houses and wells this year. In only one case was there any surface impact, it was a little wet next to the well. In one case there was water leaking in the basement but it was a house that regularly gets water in the basement so they didn’t associate it with a line leaking. In each of the other ones I was at the homes to service the systems due to low pressure or preventative maintenance. The home owners certainly didn’t expect the problem to be a leaking line because there were no visual impacts. Most those leaks were in excess of 5GPM
A few years ago I had one customers whose line was leaking in excess of 10gpm for at least 6 years They never realized the source of their water problems and electrical bills was a leaking line.
Yes, there are several ways the leakage could be less noticeable. If it drains into the weeping tile and sump system (hence, high electrity bills, too). If the house is on a hill or sandy soil so drainage is good and water does not accumulate.
But if you have clay soil, it should become saturated very quickly.
If the meter is in the yard (a non-freeze climate) then likely it is mounted on the house, so the opportunity for yard leaks would be small - especially for hard to spot leaks. If there’s a basement or crawl space, even less of the piping is hidden.
Modern meters have a small star-shaped wheel on the face that turns very quickly, and this is known as a leak detector. Shut everything off, and if that is moving at all, you have a leak.
Water meters don’t last forever, and many utilities have programs in place to proactively replace them. On the occasion when I suspected a leak, I was able to have the old meter swapped for one with a leak detector at no charge.