Detecting Sneaky Leaks: How to Find a Plumbing Leak at Home

So, you do your best to conserve water, and you put your money where your mouth is by installing water-efficient toilets, showerheads, and faucets.

However, you’d still be wasting a lot of water if you have a sneaky water leak or two at home.  

In the United States, close to 900 billion gallons of water are lost to leaks annually, a staggering figure by any standard.

To make sure that you’re not wasting water yourself, you should check your plumbing for leaks. You can also opt to hire leak detection experts to get the job done more smoothly and quickly.

If you have a nagging suspicion that there is, indeed, a plumbing leak in your home, you can make initial efforts to locate it and confirm its existence. Here are some tips to help you find plumbing leaks in your home if any.

Check Your Water Bill

Before you begin any physical effort to locate a suspected leak, check your water bill first.

If you live alone or with two other people at the most, and you have been getting huge water bills for the past few months, then you may have a plumbing leak somewhere.

Do The Water Meter Test

If your water bills are astronomical, checking your water meter will help confirm if you do have a leak.

You can start by turning off faucets, showers, toilets, and washing machines, then look more closely at your meter and watch out for signs of movement.

When you see the meter change before your eyes, even when no one’s using the water, then you have a fast-moving leak somewhere.

If you don’t see any immediate movement from your water meter, check it again a couple of hours later.

If there’s even the slightest change in the meter when you get back, then you have a plumbing leak, but a slow-moving one.

Check Kitchens and Bathrooms For Puddles

Once your water meter inspection confirms the existence of a leak, proceed to look for puddles and other signs of moisture under the kitchen and bathroom sinks.

While you’re at it, check around the bases of showers, toilets, and tubs for puddles. Do the same for areas beneath your washing machine, dishwasher, and water heater tank.

If you find puddles in any of the spots mentioned above, shut down the water supply to those fixtures and appliances right away as a precautionary measure.

Put Your Toilet Through The Dye Test

Of all the water-using fixtures in your home, it’s the toilet that tends to waste a lot of water, often without us noticing.

One of the easiest ways of confirming if your toilet is leaking is the dye test.

All you have to do is drop a dye tablet or some food coloring into your toilet tank. Leave it for about 15-30 minutes, then check if the water in the bowl has any hint of the dye color you put in the tank.

If you find colored water in the bowl, then there’s something wrong with your toilet’s flapper, that rubber stopper meant to keep water from entering the bowl until someone flushes the toilet.

The flapper could have gone brittle over time, allowing water to bleed into the bowl and wasting it.

See If There Are Damp Areas In Your Lawn

Check your lawn and see if there are patches that seem to be wetter and have so much growth compared to other spots. A lawn that has much damper or thicker patches often indicates that a pipe is leaking underground.

Check Walls, Floors, and Ceilings

Water stains on ceilings, warping, peeling, or bubbling paint on the walls, and damaged floors may indicate a plumbing leak in their vicinity.

Keep in mind that the tips above are for finding signs of plumbing leaks that are readily apparent. Some plumbing leaks are hard to find. You could do all of the above and still not locate the leak.

If your water bills remain sky-high after failing to find any obvious sign of any plumbing leak, call in a professional plumber to identify the source of a water leak in your home as accurately as possible and fix it.

Guest Contributor: Anthony Quinn