Service
Water Line Repair
Repairing the buried supply line between the meter and the house, where a leak shows as a wet patch of ground and a rising bill rather than a drip.
- Licensed and insured
- Price agreed before work
- A plumber who works your area
Two minutes at the meter
Before anyone digs anything, one test settles where the leak is.
Find the main shutoff where the supply enters the building and close it. That valve is the boundary between the buried service line and everything indoors.
Now watch the meter, using the low-flow indicator rather than the digits.
Still moving. Water is escaping between the meter and that valve. The leak is in the buried run and nothing inside the house needs opening.
Stopped. The leak is indoors, and the buried line is fine.
That single test decides whether this is an excavation job or a plumbing one, and it costs nothing.
Locate, then dig once
The expensive way to find a buried leak is to open a trench along the route and look.
The alternative is line tracing to establish where the pipe actually runs and at what depth, and acoustic equipment to pick up the sound of water escaping under pressure, which carries well through soil.
Between them the position is usually narrowed to a small area, which turns the excavation into one hole.
And before any ground is opened, utility locating marks gas, electricity and communications. Buried services rarely run where people assume, and a service line trench is exactly the depth at which they are found the hard way.
Does this sound familiar?
Problems this service solves
- A wet patch of ground between the meter and the house
- A meter that turns with the house valve closed
- Water pressure that has dropped at every fixture
- A supply line damaged by excavation or root growth
- A bill that has risen with nothing visible indoors
Signs you need water line repair
If more than one of these is true, the problem is usually past the point a plunger or a store-bought cleaner will fix.
- An area of lawn stays wet or grows faster than the rest
- The meter moves with the house isolated
- Pressure has fallen throughout the property
- There is water surfacing on the driveway or path
What to expect
How the visit works
Confirm it is the buried line
Closing the house valve and watching the meter proves it. If the meter still moves, nothing inside needs opening.
Locate before digging
Line tracing and acoustic equipment find the position and depth, so the excavation is one hole rather than a trench of guesses.
Call in utility locating
Gas, electricity and communications are marked before any ground is opened. This is not optional and it is not skipped.
Repair, test and reinstate
The failed section is replaced, pressure tested, and the ground restored.
What's included
What you get on every job, whoever we send.
- Confirmed at the meter before any digging
- Located precisely rather than trenched exploratively
- Utilities marked before the ground is opened
- Pressure tested before backfilling
Questions
Water Line Repair questions
How do I know the leak is outside rather than in the house?
Close the main shutoff where the supply enters the building, then watch the meter. That valve separates the house from the buried service line. If the meter keeps moving with the house isolated, the water is escaping between the meter and that valve, which is the buried run. If it stops, the leak is inside. It is a two-minute test and it decides whether anyone needs to open a wall.
Whose responsibility is the buried line?
In most places, the property owner's, from the meter to the house. The utility owns the main in the street and usually the meter itself; everything from there to the building is yours, including the section under a driveway or the parkway. There are jurisdictions that differ, so it is worth confirming with your utility, but the default assumption should be that the run to your house is your line.
Can the leak be repaired, or does the whole line need replacing?
It depends on the line's age and material. A modern line damaged at one point by excavation or root pressure gets a spot repair and stays repaired. An old galvanised or polybutylene line that has failed once is likely to fail again, and since the cost here is mostly in accessing the pipe rather than the pipe itself, replacing the run often works out better than paying for the same excavation twice.
Related services
Water Line Replacement
Replacing the buried supply line to a property, including trenchless methods that pull new pipe through without opening the whole route.
See what this coversWater Main Repair
Repairing the main water line serving a property, including establishing where your responsibility ends and the utility's begins before anyone digs.
See what this coversHidden Leak Detection
Finding leaks with no visible water: behind walls, under floors, in buried supply lines, using meter isolation, acoustics and thermal imaging.
See what this coversWater Heater Repair
Diagnosis and repair of gas, electric and tankless water heaters, including no-hot-water calls, leaks, pilot problems and sediment flushing.
See what this covers
Get it fixed
Water Line Repair, handled locally
Call with your ZIP code and what you are seeing. We route you to a licensed plumber in your area who does water line repair every week.
- Licensed and insured
- Answered 24/7
- Price before work