A water leak is one of those problems that hides in plain sight. By the time you can see water, the leak has often been running for weeks behind a wall, under a slab or out in the yard. The good news is that you do not need any special gear to confirm whether a leak exists, just a few minutes and your water meter. This page walks through the home checks any owner can do, the warning signs worth taking seriously, and when it is time to get a plumber in with the proper detection equipment. For the full picture on what we use to pinpoint a hidden leak, see our guide to water leak detection on the Gold Coast.
The meter test, the one check every owner should know
The water meter is the single most useful diagnostic tool you own, and it is sitting at your front boundary right now. Here is how to use it properly.
- Turn everything off. Every tap closed, no toilets mid-flush, dishwasher and washing machine not running, irrigation off, pool top-up off, ice maker not filling. The house has to be completely water-still.
- Find the leak indicator. Most Gold Coast meters have a small dial, star or triangle that spins whenever water is flowing, even a trickle. Newer digital meters show consumption to three decimal places, so 0.001 kL is one litre.
- Watch for a minute or two. Wait five minutes first so any cistern that was topping up has finished, then watch the leak indicator. If it moves at all with everything off, water is escaping somewhere.
- Confirm the rate. Note the digital reading, wait 30 minutes touching nothing, and read again. The difference is your leak rate. Multiply by 48 to get litres per day. A loss of five litres every half hour is invisible to the eye but adds up to roughly 240 litres a day.
This is exactly the test we walk people through when they ring about a high bill. We cover the meter-reading detail in more depth on why is my water bill suddenly high, so if the bill is what prompted you, start there as well.
The warning signs that point to a hidden leak
The meter test tells you whether a leak exists. These signs help you guess where it might be before anyone starts opening up walls.
An unexplained jump in the water bill
Gold Coast City Council bills quarterly, so a leak can run for a couple of months before it shows on paper. Normal household use is reasonably steady, so a sudden 50 to 200 per cent jump that you cannot explain by hot weather, visitors or more garden watering almost always means water is going somewhere it should not.
The sound of running water with everything off
Stand in a quiet room at night with all taps and appliances off and listen. A faint hiss or trickle inside a wall is often the first thing people notice with an in-wall pipe leak. It is easy to dismiss, but it is a genuine clue.
Damp, staining or bubbling
A damp patch on a ceiling under an upstairs bathroom, a swelling skirting board, a stain spreading on a wall near the bathroom or hot water unit, paint that is bubbling or lifting, or mould appearing on a wall that used to be dry. These are all signs water is tracking through the building fabric.
A hot water unit that keeps running
If the leak is on the hot side, your hot water unit reheats the water it keeps losing, so it cycles far more than it should. People often notice the gas or power bill climbing before the water bill. Touch the cold inlet pipe on the unit after a period of no use, if it feels warm, the unit has been running recently, which means water has been flowing somewhere.
Soggy lawn or reduced pressure
A constantly wet patch in the lawn, an area that is greener than everything around it, or a drop in pressure at your taps or sprinklers can all point to a leak on the buried supply line between the meter and the house, or on an irrigation main.
Warm spots on the floor
On a slab home, a hot water line leaking under the concrete can create a noticeably warm patch on the tiles or floor above it. Walk the floor in bare feet, an unexplained warm area is a strong hint of an under-slab hot water leak.
The simple checks you can do yourself
Before you call anyone, a short walk around the house narrows things down and can sometimes solve the problem for free.
- Test every toilet. A toilet quietly running into the bowl is the most common household leak by a long way. Put a few drops of food colouring in the cistern, wait 30 minutes without flushing, and if colour appears in the bowl the flush valve is leaking. A running toilet can waste 200 to 400 litres a day.
- Check every tap, inside and out. Outdoor taps get forgotten because they are out of sight. A slow drip or a garden tap left a fraction open wastes water day and night.
- Look under every sink and behind appliances. Damp, water stains, green corrosion or white scale on fittings under vanities, behind the toilet, behind the dishwasher and washing machine all point to a slow leak at a connection.
- Eyeball your flexi hoses. The braided hoses under sinks and behind toilets are a leading cause of catastrophic flooding. Any rust spots, kinks or soft patches mean replace now, not later. We cover this on should I replace my flexi hoses proactively.
If you find a dripping tap or a running toilet, that is your culprit and a straightforward fix. If everything visible looks dry but the meter is still moving, the leak is hidden, and that is when the detection gear earns its keep.
When it is a hidden leak, and what we do about it
A hidden leak is one inside a wall, under a slab, under the floor or buried in the yard. You cannot see it, and chasing it by opening up random sections of wall is a slow, expensive and destructive way to work. The whole point of professional leak detection is to find the exact spot first, so the repair is small and targeted rather than a demolition job.
The tools we reach for depend on the situation. Acoustic ground microphones and electronic listening gear pick up the high-frequency sound of water escaping under pressure, and a correlator can compare that sound at two points on a pipe to calculate where the leak sits between them. Thermal imaging finds the warm signature of a hot water leak behind a wall or under a floor. Moisture meters confirm exactly how far damp has tracked. A pressure test isolates which section of pipework is losing water. For the trickiest cases, tracer gas (a safe hydrogen and nitrogen mix) is introduced into the line and a sensitive detector follows it to the surface above the leak. We explain the acoustic side in detail on how does acoustic leak detection work.
The reason this matters is non-invasive detection. Finding the leak before we cut anything open means we open one small area instead of guessing across a whole wall, which keeps the repair cost and the reinstatement cost right down. Whether the fix is a burst pipe repair on a failed section, or a section repipe where the pipework is at end of life, getting the location right first is what saves you money.
Why you should not let a small leak ride
It is tempting to ignore a slow leak, especially if it is only nudging the bill a little. The trouble is that leaks do not get better on their own, they get worse, and the damage compounds. A slow drip into a wall cavity feeds mould and rots framing. An under-slab leak can undermine the concrete over time. A hot water leak burns money on the energy side as well as the water side. The water you are paying for is usually the smallest part of the eventual bill, the repair and the damage remediation are where it really hurts. Finding and fixing a leak early is almost always the cheap option.
When to call us
Do the meter test today. If the meter is still while the house is water-still, you probably do not have a leak and the bill jump is genuine usage. If the meter keeps ticking with everything off and you cannot find an obvious dripping tap or running toilet, it is time to get us in with the detection gear. If a pipe has actually let go and water is coming out fast, that is an emergency, isolate the water at the meter and ring us straight away. Our emergency plumbing service runs around the clock for exactly that. Otherwise, get in touch and we will book a leak detection visit, find the source, and give you a fixed price to fix it.