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Your plumbing system is extensive, with a lot of piping and fixtures. From time to time, those areas can develop leaks that will ultimately run up your water bill. Being able to actively detect a leak will allow you to respond quickly to repair it before it runs up your bills unexpectedly.
Signs You Have a Water Leak
Depending on where your water leak is, you can experience different signs. One of the most obvious is that you notice excess water on your floors, ceilings, or walls. You may feel your walls are damp to the touch or your floors feel spongy to walk on. You may see yellow water stains on the ceiling or mold and mildew growth. If the leak has been going on for a while, you may even experience bubbling paint or wallpaper.
Contingent on the intensity of the leak, you may hear a dripping or running water noise in your wall. If you have a large water leak, you will notice a decrease in water pressure coming out of your faucets. If you have an outside leak, you’ll notice wet patches on your lawn or yard that just never seem to dry out.
Unfortunately, it’s easy to dismiss some of these subtle signs of a water leak. Many homeowners don’t realize there’s a problem until they get an exorbitant water bill with no other explanation.
Verifying a Water Leak at Your Home
If you suspect you have a hidden water leak in your home, there’s one easy method you can use to verify your suspicions. Turn off all the water running in your home, including your appliances. Go out to your water meter and write down the reading. Give it about 15 to 20 minutes and check the reading again. If the reading has increased, it’s a key sign that you have a hidden water leak.
The Importance of Prompt Repairs
When you verify you have a plumbing problem, it’s important to respond quickly to repair it. You never want to let plumbing problems go, as they can lead to much bigger problems in a very short amount of time. Water is extremely damaging to all building materials and even your belongings.
If left to go too long, water can actually damage the structural integrity of your home. The excess moisture can create the perfect environment for toxic mold and mildew to grow. Mold and mildew are not only damaging to your home, but they can also wreak havoc on your respiratory system.
Check Your Toilets
If you’re not sure what’s causing your rising water bill and you haven’t seen any signs of a water leak in your home, you may have a problem with a running toilet. If your toilet tank continues to leak water into the toilet bowl, it will continually run down through your drain line and constantly waste fresh water. A quick way to test if your toilet is running is to add food coloring to the tank.
Give it about five to 10 minutes and look at the bowl. If the food coloring is in the bowl, you have a running toilet. Fixing this problem may be as easy as cleaning the area underneath the flapper to remove any sediment buildup. However, in other cases, you may need to enlist the help of our plumbing professionals to repair the issue with your toilet.
Professional Leak Detection
Our professionals have numerous tools they use to detect hidden plumbing leaks in your home. Some of the most common methods are pressure testing, die testing, infrared cameras, and acoustic listening devices. Pressure testing works by testing the pressure throughout the various sections of your plumbing system to see if there’s a drop. If there is, it’s an indication there’s a leak in that section of the line.
Dye testing can be particularly helpful when dealing with underground leaks. Our licensed plumber will put a colored dye through your water. Wherever the water is leaking out of your line, that colored water will rise to the surface and indicate the location. Infrared cameras can be particularly helpful for detecting leaks behind your walls.
They use thermal imaging to detect a difference in temperature, with a colder temperature typically meaning a leak in your water supply. Lastly, acoustic listening devices simply amplify the dripping or hissing noise that a leaking pipe will make to help our plumber better locate the source of the leak.
Repairing Water Leaks
The repairs necessary for your water leak will depend on the severity of the leak and its location. Sometimes all that’s needed is tightening up a loose fitting to stop the leak. In other cases, there may actually be a hole in your piping. It’s common to cut out small sections of piping that have damage and replace them with new piping.
Unfortunately, if your plumbing runs behind the wall, it’s likely necessary to remove a small section of the wall to access the piping behind. In these cases, the repairs will take longer because you’ll need the piping repaired and then your wall patched.
If the reason you have a water leak is due to corrosion in your line, it’s typically most advantageous to replace the entire line. Trying to repair leaks due to corrosion will simply be a short-term fix, as your piping will likely develop even more leaks as it continues to corrode.
The overall longevity of your piping is contingent on numerous factors. The type of material, the amount of maintenance it receives, how promptly you get repair service, and if you have had water are just some of the many factors. Routine inspections are a great way to catch aging piping so you can replace it before dealing with unfortunate water leaks in your home.
Preventative Measures
There are a handful of things you can do to greatly reduce your risk of experiencing a plumbing leak in your home. One of the easiest is to get an annual plumbing inspection. This is where one of our plumbers will pressure test all your piping to identify any areas that are leaking. Another great preventative measure is a smart leak detection system. This system uses a series of sensors to detect water. You place the sensors underneath your sinks, near your water-using appliances, and so forth.
Anytime there is a water leak, the sensor will detect it and let you know by sending an alert to your smartphone. If you opt to use smart valves, your smart leak detection system will automatically shut off the water supply to that location to prevent further damage. These systems can be a lifesaver when it comes to not only detecting your water leaks but also minimizing the damage.
Expert Plumbing Repair Service
Superior Comfort Heating and Cooling offers expert plumbing repair service for the Flat Rock, MI area. We can also help with all your plumbing installation, replacement, and maintenance needs, including expert water heater services. Call our office today to book your next appointment with one of our experienced plumbing professionals.
