Leak detection across the whole property
A moving meter does not mean a slab leak. In Arizona it more often means irrigation, a pool line, or the service pipe under the front yard. Detection is a process of elimination before it is a piece of equipment.
Located from the surface. Nothing dug or cut while we are still narrowing it down.
On this page
Everything that is not the slab
Slab leaks get all the attention in this state, and for good reason. But a great many of the calls that start with "my bill has doubled and I cannot find anything wet" turn out to have nothing to do with the concrete at all.
An Arizona property has a lot of pressurized pipe outside the building envelope: the service line from the meter, hose bibs, an irrigation system that may run for hundreds of feet under gravel and planting, pool plumbing, sometimes a well and pressure tank, sometimes a separate line to a casita or a workshop. Any of it can fail invisibly, because the ground here swallows water without complaint and the surface dries within hours.
This page is about that whole search. If you already have a warm patch on the floor and you suspect the slab specifically, slab leak detection is the more focused page. If you have a bill and a mystery, start here.
The elimination sequence, which does most of the work
Before any instrument comes out, the search area gets cut down by isolation. This is the part homeowners can partly do themselves, and it is the part that saves the most time.
Step one: shut the house down and read the meter. Every tap off, toilets undisturbed, dishwasher and washing machine off, ice maker off, evaporative cooler off, reverse osmosis unit allowed to finish filling, water softener bypassed, pool auto-fill off, irrigation controller set to off rather than idle. Then watch the low-flow indicator in the meter box. If it moves, water is leaving the system.
Step two: close the irrigation valve and read it again. If the meter stops, the leak is in irrigation. That single test typically eliminates the largest and most likely category in fifteen minutes.
Step three: close the main house valve, leaving the meter live. If the meter still moves with the house isolated, the leak is between the meter and the house, the service line. If it stops, the leak is inside the building.
Step four: split hot from cold. Isolating the water heater outlet tells the plumber which half of the interior system is losing water, which halves the interior search again.
By the end of that sequence a whole property has usually narrowed to one system. Only then does the acoustic gear, the tracer gas or the thermal camera earn its keep.
Why this order matters
Instruments find leaks in a defined area. They are poor at searching a half-acre lot. Isolation is what converts "somewhere on this property" into "somewhere in this thirty-foot run", and that is where detection equipment is genuinely excellent.
Irrigation is the usual suspect, and it hides well
Most Arizona properties irrigate, and most irrigation runs shallow, under decorative gravel, through planting beds and around mature trees. Everything about that environment conceals a leak.
The common failures are unglamorous. A cracked PVC lateral, often from ground movement or an old repair. A valve diaphragm that no longer seats, so the zone weeps continuously even when the controller is off. A broken emitter or a chewed drip line, rodents and rabbits genuinely do this, repeatedly, in the same spots. A riser snapped off at ground level and buried in gravel. A backflow assembly weeping at a fitting.
The tells, if there are any: an area of unusually vigorous growth, a patch of gravel that stays dark longer than the rest, a soft or sunken spot, or a persistent damp line following a straight path across the yard. Often there is nothing at all, because the water goes straight down.
Detection here is zone-by-zone. Each valve is isolated and pressure-tested independently, which identifies the failing zone, and then acoustic listening or tracer gas walks it down to a spot. The digging that follows is shallow and local.
Dispatchers here know the work, so you are not talking to a script.
Pools, and the bucket test that settles the argument
Pool water disappears in an Arizona summer for entirely legitimate reasons. Evaporation on a hot windy day is substantial, and that is exactly why a genuine pool leak can run for a whole season without anyone concluding anything is wrong.
The bucket test separates the two properly. Put a weighted bucket on a pool step so it sits stable and partly submerged. Fill the bucket with pool water until the inside level matches the pool level. Mark both. Turn the auto-fill off. Wait twenty-four hours and compare.
Evaporation removes water from both at the same rate. If the pool has dropped noticeably more than the bucket, the pool is losing water somewhere other than its surface: the return or suction plumbing, a skimmer throat, a light niche, a fitting, or the shell.
An important Arizona wrinkle: an auto-fill valve makes a pool leak invisible while quietly putting the entire loss on your water bill. If your bill is wrong and you have a pool with an auto-fill, that is one of the first things to test.
Pool shell and pool-equipment work is generally a pool specialist rather than a plumber, and we will say so. What a plumber sorts out is whether the water is going into the pool system, the irrigation, the service line or the house.
The service line under the front yard
Between the meter and the house there is a length of pipe that belongs entirely to you. On many Arizona properties it runs under gravel, under a driveway, under pavers or beneath a mature front-yard landscape. When it fails, there is frequently no symptom at all inside the building.
What you sometimes get: a damp patch or a soft area in the gravel, an unexpectedly green stripe, water appearing at the edge of a driveway, or a drop in pressure at the house. What you usually get is a bill.
Step three of the elimination sequence identifies it definitively, the house isolated and the meter still turning leaves nowhere else for the water to go. Locating along the run is acoustic and tracer gas work from the surface. Repair is covered on main water line repair, and it is worth knowing in advance that caliche and hardscape are what drive the cost of that job.
Inside walls, under cabinets, above ceilings
Interior leaks that are not under the slab tend to be at connections rather than in the middle of a pipe: an angle stop behind a toilet, a supply line to a faucet, a shower valve leaking behind tile, a washing machine box, a refrigerator line, a water heater fitting, an expansion tank at the end of its life.
The critical thing to understand is that water travels. It runs along the top of a plate, down a stud, across a subfloor and behind the drywall paper before it appears anywhere you can see it. The damp patch is almost never directly below the fault, and this is why exploratory cutting so often produces several holes and no answer.
Detection here means mapping. A moisture meter across the wall establishes the boundary of wetting and the direction of the gradient. Thermal imaging shows the shape of the plume. Between the two, the likely source is identified before anything is opened, which usually means one clean access hole instead of four hopeful ones.
Same-day where a crew is nearby, and an honest window where not.
Drain-side leaks, which never touch the meter
Drain lines are not pressurized and not metered on the way out, so a leaking drain produces damage without any billing signal at all. If your meter is perfectly still and you still have moisture, this is where to look.
The signature is intermittent. Damp that appears after a shower and dries in between. A ceiling stain below an upstairs bathroom that grows on laundry day. A musty smell in a cabinet. Bubbling paint at the base of a wall near a wet room.
These are diagnosed by running fixtures one at a time while watching, by camera inspection of the line, and occasionally by dye testing to confirm the path. Older Phoenix and Tucson houses with cast-iron drains are a particular case, because corrosion and scale build-up can cause seepage at joints rather than a single obvious break, camera inspection is usually the honest first step there.
The false alarms worth ruling out first
Four things regularly send people looking for a leak that does not exist.
A water softener mid-regeneration. It sends water to drain, the meter records it, and it looks like consumption. Normal. A softener stuck in regeneration or cycling far too frequently, however, runs continuously and is indistinguishable from a leak on a meter reading. Bypass it before any test.
A toilet fill valve cycling silently. A flapper that no longer seals lets water creep past into the bowl, and the fill valve tops up in short bursts you never hear. A few drops of food coloring in the tank, undisturbed for twenty minutes, gives you a definitive answer.
A pool auto-fill. Discussed above, and genuinely one of the most common causes of an unexplained Arizona bill.
Evaporative cooler use and seasonal irrigation changes. Both legitimately raise consumption, and both get blamed on leaks or blamed for them, depending on the direction of the confusion.
Seasonal and vacant properties are where this gets expensive
An occupied house catches a leak reasonably quickly, someone hears it, smells it, or opens a bill. A house that has been closed since May catches nothing for four months.
If you own a seasonal property anywhere across the Valley, the Sun Cities, Green Valley, the river communities or the high country, two habits pay for themselves: read and record the meter the day you leave, and have whoever checks the property read it again periodically. A number that has moved with nobody inside is unambiguous.
Better still, shut the water off at the main and remove the possibility entirely. That whole routine is on the vacant home water shutoff prep page.
Tell us what the meter is doing and we will tell you what to isolate next.
What people ask when the meter will not stop
Several of these you can answer yourself in under half an hour, which is why they are here rather than on the phone.
We would rather you rule things out cheaply first.
My bill doubled but nothing in the house looks wet. Where is it going?
In Arizona, the odds strongly favor something outside the house. Irrigation is the single most common answer, a cracked lateral, a valve that no longer seats, a broken emitter buried under gravel, a drip line chewed by rodents. Second most common is a pool: the return line, the skimmer line, or the auto-fill valve quietly topping up a pool that is losing water elsewhere.
After those, the service line between the meter and the house, a toilet fill valve cycling silently, or a water softener stuck in regeneration. All of them produce a moving meter and a horrible bill with a perfectly dry interior.
How do I separate irrigation from the house so I know which one it is?
Most Arizona properties have a shut-off valve dedicated to the irrigation system, usually near the backflow assembly or the valve manifold. Close it, then run the meter test again with everything in the house off. If the meter stops, the leak is in irrigation and the search is now outdoors. If it keeps moving, irrigation is innocent.
That one test eliminates roughly half the possibilities in about fifteen minutes, and it is the first thing a good plumber will do anyway.
How can I tell whether my pool is leaking or just evaporating?
Arizona evaporation is genuinely significant in summer, which is why pool leaks hide so well here. The bucket test separates them: put a weighted bucket on a pool step, fill it with pool water to match the pool level, mark both levels, switch the auto-fill off, and compare after twenty-four hours.
Evaporation affects both equally. If the pool has dropped more than the bucket, water is leaving through something other than the surface, plumbing, a fitting, the shell or the skimmer.
What is the service line and why does it matter?
It is the pipe carrying water from your meter at the street to the point where it enters the house. On most Arizona properties it runs under the front yard, often under driveway, decorative gravel or hardscape, and it is entirely the homeowner responsibility from the meter onward.
When it leaks, the water usually disappears into the ground with no interior symptom whatsoever. Sometimes you get a persistently damp patch, unusually green growth in one spot, or a soft area in the gravel. Often you get nothing but the bill.
Are the methods different from slab leak detection?
They overlap but the sequence is different. Whole-property detection is mostly about systematic elimination: isolate irrigation, isolate the pool, isolate the house, isolate hot from cold, and watch the meter after each step. That narrows an enormous search area down to one system before any instrument is used.
Then the tools come out, acoustic listening for pressurized lines, tracer gas for buried runs, thermal imaging inside walls, moisture meters on drywall, and a camera for drain-side leaks. Slab detection is the same toolkit applied to one specific possibility.
Can a leak be on the drain side rather than the supply side?
Yes, and those never show on the meter, because drain lines are not pressurized and are not metered on the way out. Drain leaks announce themselves differently: a musty smell, a damp patch that appears only after a shower or a wash cycle, staining on a ceiling below a bathroom, or bubbling paint at the base of a wall.
These are found by isolating fixtures and running them one at a time, by camera inspection, and sometimes by dye testing. If your meter is completely still and you still have moisture, this is the direction to look.
I have a wet spot on the wall but no idea what is behind it.
That is a genuinely good reason to call rather than to start cutting. A moisture meter maps the extent of wetting so you know where the source is likely to be rather than where the water has travelled to. Thermal imaging often shows the plume shape, which points upstream.
Water travels a long way along framing and behind drywall before it appears. The wet patch is almost never directly below the fault, which is exactly why exploratory cutting so often produces two holes and no answer.
Does the water softener cause false alarms?
Regularly. A softener regenerating sends water to drain, which the meter registers as consumption. That is normal. What is not normal is a softener stuck in regeneration or cycling far more often than its settings should produce, that runs water continuously and looks exactly like a leak.
If your house has a softener, bypass it before running any meter test. It is a thirty-second action that prevents a wasted afternoon.
How much water can a small leak actually waste?
Enough to matter, and enough to show clearly on a bill. A leak too small to hear will run every hour of every day, which is the point people underestimate, it is not the flow rate. It is the fact that it never stops. Over a monthly billing cycle a slow underground leak comfortably outpaces a family of four.
It is also worth saying that fixing a hidden leak is the largest single water-efficiency gain available in most Arizona homes, and generally the least expensive one on the list.
Will you have to dig up my yard to find an irrigation leak?
Not to find it. Locating is done from the surface with acoustic equipment, tracer gas, and systematic zone-by-zone pressure testing of the irrigation valves. The aim is to reduce a whole yard to a spot before a shovel appears.
Once located, reaching an irrigation lateral is usually shallow work. The lines are not deep, though in decorative gravel and around mature landscaping there is care needed getting to them.
What about leaks in a vacant or seasonal property?
These are the expensive ones, because nothing gets noticed. A slow leak in an occupied house gets caught by a bill or a smell within weeks. In a house closed for the summer it runs unopposed for months.
If you own a seasonal property, a meter reading before you leave and a check by whoever looks after the place is worth more than any device. Better still, shut the water off at the main, covered on the vacant home water shutoff prep page.
Do you test water quality as part of this?
No. We locate leaks and connect you with plumbers who repair them. Water quality testing, annual backflow testing, well permitting and septic permitting are separate regulated activities that we do not carry out.
If a leak investigation raises a water quality question, your water provider is the right starting point for what they report at your address.
Water going somewhere. Nowhere obviously wet.
Call and we will connect you with someone who works through it systematically instead of digging hopefully. Anywhere in Arizona.
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