Leak Detection & Repair in Phoenix & Scottsdale, priced before we start.
There is a certain kind of plumber who responds to a suspected leak by opening drywall until he finds water. It works, eventually. It also leaves you with a repair bill and a decorating bill, and no guarantee that the first three holes were necessary.
The alternative is to measure. Isolate the system and pressure test it, and you know whether there is a leak at all. Listen with acoustic gear, and you know roughly where. Put a thermal camera on it, and you can usually narrow that to within a foot before anyone picks up a cutting tool.
That sequence costs a couple of hundred dollars and routinely saves several thousand. It also occasionally establishes that there is no leak, and that the water bill went up because of an irrigation valve. That is a good outcome too.
Worth investigating when
The meter turns with the house shut down
The single most reliable test you can run yourself. Everything off, watch the low-flow dial. Movement means loss.
Musty smell with no visible source
Water inside a wall cavity finds gypsum and organic material long before it finds daylight. Your nose usually beats your eyes by weeks.
Staining that returns after painting
A stain that comes back is an active leak. A stain that stays put after a repaint was historic. The difference is worth establishing before you repaint twice.
A bill that will not settle
Compare against the same month last year rather than last month. Seasonal irrigation makes month-to-month comparison useless in the Valley.
How we find it
- 01
Isolate and pressure test
Establishes whether a leak exists and which system carries it. Cheap, fast, and it prevents a great deal of pointless searching.
- 02
Acoustic survey
Pressurised water escaping a pipe makes a specific noise. Ground microphones pick it up through slab and soil, and the loudest point is generally the closest point.
- 03
Thermal confirmation
Hot-line leaks show as a plume. Cold-line leaks show as evaporative cooling. Both narrow the acoustic result to something you can act on.
- 04
Minimum-access repair
We open the smallest opening that lets us do the work properly, in the least disruptive place available.
What it typically runs
$225 – $650 to locate
Detection is credited against the repair if you have us do the work. Repair cost depends entirely on what we find and where — you get that number before anything starts.
Financing is available on larger jobsGuessing is expensive. Measuring is cheap. That is most of what there is to say about leak detection.
Leak Detection: questions we get asked
Straight answers, the same ones we give on the phone.