Signs of a hidden leak
- A water bill that has jumped with no change in use.
- A hiss or a ticking sound behind a wall when nothing is running.
- A damp or discoloured patch on a wall or ceiling.
- A green, lush strip of lawn in dry weather (a leaking underground line).
- The meter ticking over when every tap in the house is off.
- A hot spot on the floor (a leaking hot water line under a slab).
How we find a leak
We start at the meter. With every tap and appliance off, a meter that keeps ticking tells us there is a leak on the property side. We then isolate the house in sections — shutting the hot water, the irrigation, the toilets one at a time — to narrow the leak to a zone. Inside a zone we use acoustic tracing (listening for the hiss of a pressurised leak), thermal imaging on hot lines, and CCTV on drains to pinpoint the exact fitting or break. Only then do we open the wall, floor or ground.
Under-slab and under-floor leaks
A leak under a concrete slab is the hardest to find and the most expensive to get wrong. We pressure-test the slab lines, trace the run, and listen for the leak before we cut. Where a line under a slab has failed, the options are a localised break-out and repair, or rerouting the line overhead or along a wall — we will tell you which makes sense for the layout and the cost, and we will not jackhammer a whole floor to fix one joint.
Drain and sewer leaks
A leaking sewer is different to a leaking water line — it is not pressurised, so it does not hiss, and the signs are a smell, a damp patch, or a slow collapse of soil above a broken joint. We use CCTV to find the break in a sewer line and, where the leak is under a floor, a dye or pressure test to confirm. A leaking sewer is a health issue as well as a plumbing one, so we prioritise it.
Pool, tank and irrigation leaks
On the rural-residential blocks around Tyers and the larger Traralgon East lots, leaks in tank supply, pump lines and irrigation are common. We pressure-test the pump line, check the tank fittings, and trace the irrigation run. A pump that short-cycles (clicks on and off when nothing is being used) is almost always a leak on the pressure side, and we find it before it burns the pump out.
After we find it
Finding the leak is half the job; the repair is usually quick once we know where it is. We cut the smallest access we can, repair in the right material, pressure-test, and reinstate. We give you a written quote for the repair before we start, separate from the detection, so you know the cost up front.
Water meters, night flows and the quiet leak
The most expensive leak is the quiet one — a tiny weep at a joint behind a wall, or a hairline crack in a buried line, that runs day and night and shows up only on the bill. We use the meter as the first instrument: with every tap and appliance off, a meter that keeps ticking tells us the leak is on the property side, and a meter that stops tells us the leak is past the meter on the authority side. We then isolate the hot water, the irrigation, the toilets and the individual circuits one at a time, watching the meter each time, to narrow the leak to a zone before we trace it acoustically. A night-flow test — reading the meter last thing at night and first thing in the morning — catches a slow leak that a short test misses, and we will walk you through it on the phone so you have the evidence before we charge for a visit.