Leak Detection

Signs You Have a Hidden Leak

Most leaks don’t announce themselves with a puddle. They show up as small changes you notice over a few weeks. If you see more than one of these, it’s time to start checking.

• A water bill that jumps without any change in how you use water
• The sound of running water when every fixture is off
• Warm spots on tile or concrete floors, often in one room or along a hallway
• Damp or stained drywall, bubbling paint or loose baseboards
• A musty smell in a closet or cabinet that doesn’t go away
• Cracked grout or tiles that seem to lift for no reason
• Soggy patches in the yard, or one spot of grass that stays greener than the rest
• Low water pressure, or a water heater that runs constantly

None of these proves a leak by itself. A high bill can be a stuck toilet flapper. A warm floor can be sun through a sliding door. Small leaks add up, too. The EPA estimates the average household’s leaks waste more than 9,300 gallons a year, and about 9 percent of homes have leaks that waste 50 gallons or more a day. That’s why the first step is a simple test you can do yourself.

The Water Meter Test, Step by Step

Your water meter is the best leak detector you already own. Here’s how to use it.

• Shut everything off. Turn off every faucet, the dishwasher, the washing machine and the ice maker. Make sure the irrigation system isn’t scheduled to run.
• Find the meter. In most of Southwest Florida it sits in a box near the street or sidewalk. Lift the lid carefully, since bugs and the occasional critter like to live in there.
• Look at the leak indicator. Many meters have a small triangle or dial that spins when any water is flowing. If it’s moving with everything off, water is going somewhere.
• Write down the reading. Take a photo of the numbers so you have a record.
• Wait about two hours without using any water, then read it again. Any change points to a leak.
• Narrow it down. If your home has a main shutoff valve, close it and watch the meter. If the meter still moves, the leak is likely on the service line between the meter and the house. If it stops, the leak is inside.

Write down what you find and tell us when you call. It saves time and helps us bring the right equipment for the job.

Common Leak Sources in the Home

Leaks usually come from a short list of places. We check the easy ones first so you don’t pay for detection work you didn’t need.

Toilets

A toilet with a worn flapper can run silently all day. To check, put a few drops of food coloring in the tank and wait about 10 minutes without flushing. If color shows up in the bowl, the flapper or flush valve is leaking. That’s usually a quick fix during a plumbing repair visit.

Faucets, fixtures and supply lines

Dripping faucets and shower valves waste water in plain sight. The ones that cause damage are hidden: a braided supply line under a vanity, a loose compression fitting behind a toilet, or a failed valve inside a shower wall. Our bathroom plumbing and kitchen plumbing work covers these fixtures and the lines that feed them.

Water heaters

Look for water in the pan, rust at the base, or a relief valve that drips. A leak from the tank itself usually means the tank is done. A leak at a fitting or valve can often be repaired. We handle both through our water heater service.

Appliances

Ice maker lines, dishwasher connections and washing machine hoses fail more often than people think. A cracked plastic ice maker line behind a fridge can soak a floor for weeks before anyone notices.

Irrigation

Sprinkler systems are a big source of lost water. Broken heads, cracked lateral lines and valves that don’t close all the way can waste a lot of water, and in some homes irrigation shares the same meter as the house. If your irrigation runs off a separate system or well, it may not show on the meter test at all.

The service line

The line from the meter to your house is buried and out of sight. Tree roots, shifting soil and old material can cause it to fail. If the meter test points outside, see our water line repair page for what that work looks like.

Under the slab

This is the one people worry about most, and for good reason. It gets its own section below.

Slab Leaks in Southwest Florida Homes

A large share of homes in Lee, Charlotte and Collier Counties are built on concrete slabs. In a lot of them, the water lines run under or through that slab. When one of those lines leaks, the water has nowhere obvious to go, so it spreads under flooring, soaks into the soil or finds a crack and comes up somewhere unexpected.

What causes slab leaks

• Abrasion. Pipes expand and contract with temperature changes. Where a pipe rubs against concrete, gravel or another pipe, it can wear a hole over time.
• Water chemistry. Water that’s aggressive toward copper can thin the pipe wall from the inside.
• High water pressure. Constant high pressure puts extra stress on pipes, joints and fittings.
• Poor installation. Kinked lines, pipes that were dented during the pour, or bad joints can fail years later.
• Soil movement. Settling and shifting soil under a slab can put stress on pipes. Florida’s sandy soils and wet seasons can play a part.

Hot line or cold line

A leak on the hot side often gives itself away with heat. You may feel a warm spot on the floor, hear the water heater running more than usual, or notice higher energy use along with a higher water bill. A cold-side leak has none of those clues. It usually shows up on the meter, in a damp spot, or as a hissing sound when the house is quiet. Telling us which you suspect helps, but we confirm it with testing before anyone breaks concrete.

How Leak Detection Works

Good leak detection is about narrowing things down step by step. We use testing and listening equipment, but the process matters as much as the tools.

Isolating the system

We start by separating the plumbing into sections. Hot and cold. Inside and outside. Individual fixtures. Shutting off and testing one section at a time tells us which part of the system is losing water.

Pressure testing

Once we’ve isolated a section, we pressurize it and watch a gauge. If pressure drops with no fixtures running, that section has a leak. This confirms the problem before we try to pinpoint it.

Acoustic listening

Water escaping a pressurized pipe makes noise. With listening equipment we can follow that sound along the line and find where it’s loudest. On a slab, that tells us where to open up the floor.

Thermal imaging and moisture meters

Thermal imaging shows temperature differences, which is especially useful for tracing hot water lines through slabs and walls. Moisture meters show where drywall, baseboards or flooring are wet. Used together, they help confirm what the pressure test and listening already told us.

The goal is a small, accurate opening instead of guessing with a jackhammer.

Repair Options and How to Choose

Once we know where the leak is, there are usually three ways to fix it. We’ll walk you through the tradeoffs for your home.

Spot repair

We open the slab or wall at the leak, cut out the damaged section and repair it. This makes sense when the pipe is otherwise in good shape and the leak has a clear cause. It does mean breaking concrete and patching the floor afterward.

Reroute or bypass

Instead of digging into the slab, we abandon the leaking section and run a new line through the attic or walls. In many single-story Florida homes this avoids tearing up tile or wood flooring. It’s often the better choice when the leaking line is long or hard to reach.

Repipe

If the pipes are old, have leaked before, or show corrosion throughout, patching one spot just moves the problem down the line. A whole-house repipe, often with PEX, replaces the system and takes the old under-slab lines out of the picture.

How to decide: think about the age of the plumbing, how many leaks you’ve had, how much flooring would have to come up, and how long you plan to stay in the house. We’ll give you our honest read on which option fits.

Pinhole Leaks in Copper and What Repeat Leaks Mean

Copper pipe can develop tiny holes that spray or seep. They often come from corrosion inside the pipe, which can be linked to water chemistry, water moving too fast through the pipe, or problems from the original installation.

One pinhole leak can be a fluke. Two or three in a few years usually means the pipe wall is thinning in other places too. At that point, each spot repair buys you time until the next one. If you’re on your second or third leak, it’s worth talking about rerouting or repiping instead of paying to patch again.

High Water Pressure and Pressure Reducing Valves

High water pressure is hard on everything in your plumbing. It stresses pipes, joints, supply lines, valves and water heaters, and it can shorten the life of each of them.

The Florida plumbing code calls for a pressure reducing valve, or PRV, when static water pressure is over 80 psi, so pressure inside the home stays at 80 psi or less. Some homes have a PRV that has worn out. Others never had one.

We check your pressure with a gauge as part of a leak call. If it’s high, we can install or replace a PRV. It’s a small part that protects the rest of the system.

Leaks in Condos and Multi-Unit Buildings

Condo leaks come with an extra question: whose leak is it? Water from one unit can show up in the ceiling of the unit below or travel along a wall into the unit next door. The source may not be where the stain is.

We trace these leaks by checking the fixtures and lines in the units involved, isolating supply and drain lines, and following the water back to where it starts. Sometimes that’s a shower pan or a toilet seal upstairs. Sometimes it’s a shared riser or a drain line that belongs to the building.

If you manage a property, our commercial plumbing service works with associations and building managers. Coordinate access with your neighbors and management early, since we may need to get into more than one unit.

Insurance and Documentation

We’re plumbers, not insurance adjusters, so we can’t tell you what your policy covers. In general, homeowners policies often treat the damage caused by a sudden leak differently from the cost of fixing the pipe itself. Some policies also cover the cost of opening floors or walls to reach the leak, and many limit coverage for slow leaks that went on for a long time. Read your policy or call your agent to find out what applies to you.

What helps any claim is good records:

• Take photos and video of wet areas, stains and damaged materials before anything gets moved
• Keep copies of water bills that show the jump in usage
• Write down when you first noticed the problem and what you did about it
• Save any failed parts, like a burst supply line, until you know if the insurer wants them

On our end, we document what we find: where the leak was, what caused it if we can tell, and what we repaired. You can hand that to your insurance company.

Water Damage Restoration Is a Separate Trade

We find and fix the leak. We don’t do water damage restoration, drying or mold remediation. Those are separate trades with their own equipment.

If water has soaked drywall, flooring or cabinets, contact a restoration company or ask your insurer for a referral. The sooner drying starts, the better. We’re happy to coordinate timing so the repair and the drying don’t hold each other up.

How to Prevent Leaks

You can’t prevent every leak, but a few habits and upgrades catch most of them early.

• Install leak sensors. Small battery sensors under sinks, behind toilets, and near the water heater and washer can alert your phone when they get wet.
• Add an automatic shutoff valve. A smart shutoff on the main line can close when it detects a leak or unusual flow.
• Replace old supply lines. Braided hoses to toilets, faucets and washers don’t last forever. Swapping them out is cheap compared to the damage one can cause.
• Check your water pressure. Keep it within code, and have a PRV installed or replaced if needed.
• Look under sinks now and then. Fast checks catch slow drips.
• Watch your bill. Compare month to month. A sudden jump is often the first sign.

Seasonal and second homes

A lot of Southwest Florida homes sit empty for months. A small leak in an empty house can run the whole summer before anyone sees it. Before you leave, shut off the main water supply or install an automatic shutoff valve, and ask someone to check the house regularly. Turn off the water heater or set it to vacation mode if you’re shutting off the water.

If you’re planning a remodel, that’s a good time to replace old lines while the walls are open. Our plumbing renovations work covers that.

When to Call and What to Do Right Now

If water is actively coming through a ceiling, wall or floor, shut off the water first. Your main shutoff is usually where the line enters the house, often on an outside wall or in the garage. If you can’t find it, the valve at the meter will stop the flow.

Then do these things:

• Turn off power to any outlets or appliances near standing water
• Shut off the water heater if you’ve closed the main
• Move furniture and valuables out of the wet area
• Take photos before you clean up

If there’s no active water but the meter test shows a leak, or you have a warm floor or a high bill, call us at (239) 518-4198 or send a request through our contact page. We serve homes and businesses across Lee, Charlotte and Collier Counties, including Fort Myers, Cape Coral and Naples. See all of our service areas.