I have a fairly serious leak in my plumbing somewhere. Not sure what to do next

Factual Questions
1

I’ve lived here for 20 years now. My water bills have effectively tripled over the past 2 years. My house (and I assume the plumbing) is circa 1956 and there are large pines in the front yard so it’s not inconceivable the pipes have an issue. My water pressure has always been poor to mediocre but I lived with it. The water pressure has not changed in the time I have lived here.

Anyway, assuming I would have to spend at least hundreds to possibly thousands to get my lawn torn up to find the underground leak I called the city out to look at my front meter and there was no leak at the city to home pipe interface. They did notice that the meter in front was showing water being used in a series of intermittent surges even when everything that used water in the house in the house was supposedly inactive.

So now I’m thinking it might be the toilet even though I don’t recall seeing it actually run continuously. So I shut off the water to the toilet once it was filled and checked it the next morning and the rear toilet tank water level was down almost a foot. I’m now wondering if I left the water inflow to the tank turned on (As normal) if the toilet is (somehow) leaking slowly and being very smoothly refilled continuously. Is that what the surges are? The use rate being billed is hundred of gallons a day and I am a single guy who does not use anywhere near that volume of water.

2

I’m confused. Where is your water meter?

3

If you fill toilet, turn off water, and over night it is down a foot in the tank, that is a lot of water per day wasted.

And if toilet is doing that, the flapper valve, or flush valve if you will, if bad and needs replacing.
Easy fix for a do it yourselfer.

One thing i would do, turn main water to house off, check meter for any movement.
It should not move with this off, if it does meter is broken.
Even an old valve that doesnt 100% shut off anymore should not flow enough water to notice, you can open a faucet to check.

Ok so if thats all good, open it back up, and turn off the valve at every sink toilet etc.
Meter should not move.
If meter does move, and you can verify no faucet or toilet etc is moving any water, start checking pipes for leaks, if you have a concrete slab home, how is the time to call the plumber.

Ok if you got no leaks, turn one thing on at a time until you get the movement.
And there is most likely your bad guy.

Now because you mention the toilet, and because of how the fill valve on the toilet works, if tank is leaking out, the water would be in surges, the fill valve opens a wee bit as the water goes down, opening more as it gets lower until it goes into full fill mode, then as it comes back up it tapers off until it stops.
Then as the tank bleeds back down again the process starts over.
You can usually hear a toilet filling, but it would leak down silently, there is no glug glug sound if you put water into the bowl slowly.

Hope that helps some?
Busted pipe does not surge, it just goes.
A leaking toilet can easily leak out 100 gallons in a day by itself, figure the tank is 3 to 5 gallons

4

By the way
Unless you live in a equatorial low elevation area, i think your water meter is in the house
and it would not be aware of any leak between the street and the house, which eliminates a leak in the yard.

Yard leaks are main lines and make big wet spots and muddy holes.

Water meter can not be any place it could possibly freeze

5

Thought it was in the front yard under the access cover under the grass right at the city and residential pipe connection just off the street and a few feet into my lawn and that’s what they were reading when the dug the ground up and reported the surges. Now I’m not sure. I do not recall ever seeing a visible water meter on my property. I assumed the city had some way of metering it from the street.

6

Where do you live?
Is it someplace that there is never the possibility of a temp below 32 degrees?

I mean sure the meter could be there, it isnt impossible, but for most of the US i dont think that would be the norm, even in florida we do have occasions where it could be cold enough to freeze an exposed to air waterpipe, which would be bad for a water meter.
I see gas meters at the street, even see some electrical meter set ups out at the street.
Have not seen water because of freezing issue.

So you have no meter that you can see yourself?
Are you allowed to open this box to look inside?

I am still suspecting the magical self emptying toilet personally.

7

I think a toilet would be the most likely thing to give surges. Underground leaks quickly come to the surface and are easy to spot as are leak faucets.

8

Agree toilet is most likely culprit.

Here in south Florida a water meter in the ground inside a buried box/vault under a cover plate (used to be concrete or iron, now commonly plastic) is the typical installation. These are usually at the interface between one’s owned property and the street, beside or beneath which runs the water main. Freezing sufficient to damage such a configuration would be vanishingly rare south of, perhaps, approximately Orlando.

9

You are mistaken on the meter placement. I live in Colorado, I can assure you that it gets below 32 degrees F here for weeks, some years, months, at a time. My meter is in a pit right next to the gravel road that I live on. As are almost all of the meters in my county.

As a matter of fact, I have never seen a water meter that was not in a pit next to the road. I am sure that they exist, especially in apartment buildings.

As to the OP, yes, your toilet is probably the culprit. It is an easy $6.00, 30 minute, DIY fix. The time & money spent replacing your flush/flapper valve will pay for itself in about 3 days.

10

As long as the meter is down in a pit below the freeze line, (after all, that’s where the water pipes are and they don’t freeze) it will work fine.

My house has the meter in the basement but the house I grew up in has the meter in a pit in the front yard. This is in the midwest and climate change nothwithstanding, it does freeze here.

And another vote for the toilet, a cheap and easy fix. At least rule it out. (Is it just me, or do the flapper valves not last very long anymore?)

11

You could try putting dye in the upper basin of the toilet. Or turn off the water to one toilet at a time, or the one you think is leaking slowly, and see if that helps. Toilets are a common cause of leaks and can be subtle.

12

Is the meter mechanical or electronic?
My mother had an issue with a newly installed electronic meter… $700 bill one month, 30 the next, 450 the next…
Eventually, the meter was found to be defective (but the water company wouldn’t refund anything, so we sank a well).

13

Freezing air temperatures generally don’t hurt buried pipes … it’s when the ground freezes that is the problem … and here deeper is better … I wanna say in Iowa they go 4 foot down …

14

Agree that Weisshund is mistaken or is quoting local practice wherever he lives. Which is where??

When I lived in the Midwestern suburbs, our meters were adjacent to the curb in a small pit about 6-12 inches below grade. This in an area with freezing temps for 3 months of the year and a week-ish below 0F almost every year.

At least in the parts of the US I’ve experienced, inside meters seem common in stuff built before about 1930 and unheard of after that.

15

FWIW, my power company offers an insurance program for a few dollars a month, to cover the risk of water or sewer line failure. Having seen a couple of people pay $10,000 in that circumstance, I signed up for coverage.

16

Just want to add a little to Weisshund’s excellent post #3 (not #4, just #3) …

If you had a leak in your water pipe under your lawn there would be a distinct swampy spot there, totally obvious … maybe not as obvious if your sewer pipes were leaking, then you’d be sniffing for ‘that’ smell …

17

That is weird to hear that northern areas have uninsulated open air outdoor water meters.

I dont understand how they would not freeze, being there is no dirt to insulate, so if the air is 40 below, there is nothing to insulate the pipe from it.

40 below air goes right into a pit very happily, because it sinks.

I lived in montana for quite a few years, i never saw an outdoor water meter

I guess i dont get around enough, but tell me, how on earth do they keep it from freezing
since it isnt insulated against the freezing air?

Here in florida where i live now, in the tiny short periods we might have a temp lower than freezing, it will freeze my well head.
Till the sun comes up anyways, then 20 min later all is better.

18

I used to be a utility operator (water meter guy) in Alberta ; residential water meters are either in the house, or have heating tape and a lot of insulation wrapped around them if outside (usually in the crawl space). Some larger commercial or apartment size meters can remain in colder areas, because they constantly have some water flowing through and are more resistant to freezing… but generally its smarter to try to keep them from freezing. If an area simply doesn’t get that cold for that long, then they could put meters in unheated pits.

I’ve also changed numerous water meters that did freeze and crack the frost plate on the back. It can be difficult to predict when a meter will freeze or not based solely on outside air temp… one unoccupied trailer house will have a cracked meter and the neighboring one won’t; it depends on a bunch of factors. The meters pretty well all have a simple and fairly robust mechanical design for measuring the water flowing through them by physically turning a disc with a magnet on it. The mechanism that counts those revolutions (and calculates the corresponding volume of water) can be anything from a simple gear-driven counter that a meter reader has to look at to read to a sophisticated digital pulse counter which transmits it’s data via radio waves… there have probably been further advances since too.

19

Obviously the flapper valve needs replacing. Probably best to just replace the whole unit; they cost less than $20. On the other hand, it seems unlikely that one toilet which only goes down a foot (2-3 gallons?) overnight could triple the water bill.

20

What race_to_the_bottom said. The flapper valve is leaking, but at the rate it’s leaking it can’t double your bill. You should fix it, but don’t expect that to solve the problem. Normal water usage is probably around 80 gallons per day per person. Based on the tank level dropping a foot overnight that leaking toilet might amount to 10 gallons a day. On the other hand, sometimes it might leak more than you measured that one time, and it probably leaks more the more water is in the tank, so fix it first.

If you have the old fashioned ballcock valve it can leak slowly without making a sound. The newer float style valves are more on and off, and you can definitely hear the sound when the fill valve opens.