High Water Usage and Hidden Leak Investigation

The problem, in plain English

High water bills almost always come back to one of three culprits. A running toilet cistern, a leaking hot water system, or an underground leak on the supply line between the meter and the house.

The tricky part is that none of these are always obvious. A slow toilet leak can waste hundreds of litres a day without you hearing it, because the water runs quietly down the back of the pan instead of pooling on the floor. A hot water unit with a failing pressure and temperature valve does the same thing, trickling constantly out of the overflow pipe into the garden where nobody notices.

Underground leaks are the ones that catch people out. Around the Redlands and Brisbane bayside we most often find them at the meter connection, under concrete driveways and paths, along old poly or galvanised supply runs to a shed or tank, and around irrigation and garden tap lines that were added years ago. Sandy bayside soil swallows the water, so there is rarely an obvious wet patch until the ground starts to sink or a slab edge gets damp.

Meanwhile the meter keeps counting. A leak the size of a pinhole on a pressurised supply line can push through thousands of litres a week, which is how a normal quarterly bill suddenly doubles with nothing at home having changed.

How DK Plumbing fixes it

We start at the meter. With every tap, appliance and toilet in the house shut off, the meter dial should sit completely still. If it keeps ticking over, water is escaping somewhere on your side of the meter and we know we are looking for a real leak rather than a usage habit.

From there it is a process of elimination. We close the isolation valve at the house to split the underground supply line from the internal plumbing, then re-read the meter. Movement with the house isolated points to a buried supply leak. No movement means the problem is inside, so we work through cisterns, mixer bodies, the hot water unit and its relief valves, and any filter or irrigation connections until we find it.

For buried leaks we use acoustic listening and pressure testing to narrow the location down to a small area before anything gets dug up. That keeps the excavation, the reinstatement and the cost as small as possible, rather than trenching the whole run on a guess.

Once we find the cause we quote the repair upfront and get it fixed, usually on the same visit. We also give you a written record of the fault and the repair, which is what your water authority asks for if you want to apply for a leak allowance or remission on the inflated bill. Your next reading should tell the story.

Common questions