Water bill jumped? A meter test you can do before calling

A water bill that suddenly runs well above your usual, with no puddle anywhere, sends most people looking for a plumber right away. Before you call anyone, including me, there is a simple test you can run at the meter yourself. It will not tell you exactly where the water is going, but it splits the problem in half: inside the house, or underground between the meter and the house. That alone changes who you need and what the visit looks like.

Finding the meter and reading the dial

The meter usually sits in a box near the street or the edge of the property, under a lid you can lift with a screwdriver or a meter key. Lift it carefully and look before reaching in, since a box that stays dark and damp tends to collect insects. On the meter face you will see the main register, which counts total usage, and somewhere on the dial a small leak indicator, often a red or black triangle or a little star shaped wheel. That indicator is the part you care about. It turns with even a very small flow, far smaller than the main register would show for a long while. If there is mud or water over the face, clear it gently so the indicator is easy to see. Take a photo of the register while you are down there, because those numbers come in handy later.

Test one: everything in the house turned off

Go inside and make sure nothing is using water. Faucets closed, the washer and dishwasher idle, the ice maker off if you can reach its valve, and any irrigation shut down at the controller. Give the toilets time to finish refilling and make sure nobody flushes. Then go back out and watch the leak indicator for a few minutes. If it sits perfectly still, nothing is moving through the meter right now, and the high bill may come from something that runs off and on, like a toilet that refills by itself every so often or a sprinkler zone set to run at night. If the indicator is turning, even slowly, water is going somewhere while every fixture is off. That is a leak, and the next test tells you which side of the shutoff it is on.

Test two: close the main at the house

Now find the shutoff where the water line enters the house. On a lot of homes it is outside near a hose bib, in the garage, or in a small box between the meter and the house, often a valve with a red handle like the one pictured at the top of this post. Close it fully and go back to the meter. If the indicator stops, the leak is inside the house, somewhere past that valve. If the indicator keeps turning with the house shut off, the water is leaving the buried service line between the meter and your shutoff. Those are two very different jobs. One is a search through fixtures, walls and maybe the slab. The other is a search through the yard. If the shutoff is stiff, do not lean on it with a wrench hard enough to snap the handle. Leave it, and tell me about it when you call.

When the leak is inside

Start with the toilets, because a flapper that no longer seals can run quietly all day and nobody notices. Put a few drops of food coloring in the tank, leave it alone without flushing, and check the bowl later. Color in the bowl means the flapper is letting water through. Next, look at the water heater: the relief valve should not be dripping, and the drain line coming off it should be dry. Check under every sink, behind the washer, and at any outside spigot fed from inside the house. If all of that is dry and the meter still showed flow with the main open, the leak is likely inside a wall or under the floor. On a slab, a warm spot underfoot often means a hot water line is leaking beneath it, and that is worth mentioning when you call, along with where in the house you felt it.

When the leak is outside

A leak on the service line usually shows itself in the yard sooner or later: a soft patch that stays wet in dry weather, a strip of grass greener than the rest, or a sinking spot along the path from the meter to the house. Sometimes there is nothing to see at all, because sandy ground can carry the water down and away before it ever reaches the surface. Either way, the meter test has already done the important part, which is proving the water is leaving along that stretch. From there, the leak gets located before anything is dug, so the repair is a hole at the leak and not a trench along the whole line. If the meter itself or the fitting on the street side of it is the thing leaking, that is usually the water utility’s to fix, and calling them first is the right move. Everything on your side of the meter, I handle.

Once you know which side the leak is on, leak detection in Mobile explains how it gets pinpointed. You can send me your meter results through the contact page, and it will save us both a step.