Sometimes it’s fairly easy to figure out if you have a leak in one of your pipes—the signs alone can be pretty clear. Things like wet flooring, ruined drywall, or puddles of water in your yard or lawn can all pretty much tell you that there’s a leak without really having to look at your plumbing to determine that for yourself. But what this issue more than likely does not tell you is where the leak is.

In the past, finding a leak was very much a matter of making an educated guess and then digging in with heavy machinery. If the guess was wrong, your plumber would have to dig up more of your property until they found the leak and fixed it. That could lead to a horrendously expensive process that took a ton of time and then a ton of extra money to restore when done. As a result, something like a slab leak, broken sewer line, or broken water main was devastating for homeowners.

However, today that isn’t the case. When you’ve got a leak, the San Diego plumbers from Plumbing Plus are equipped and trained in modern leak detection technology that completely avoids the needless digging while still locating the leak accurately.

How It Works

A leak detection service starts by shutting off your water, draining your water lines, and then filling them with pressurized air. From there, our plumbers use a specialized tool that’s equipped with a hyper-sensitive microphone that can detect even faint, high-pitched noises. If the leak is small, the air rushing through your pipes will still be able to escape, which causes noise. While that noise may not be audible to your ears normally, the hyper-sensitive microphone can pick it up and amplify it, thus showing your plumber where the leak is.

Another method we use for leak detection is one we also use for a number of other problems: a video inspection. Video inspections are remarkably simple—we feed a camera on a line down your drain or into the potentially impacted pipe, and the camera shows us what’s going on inside your plumbing line. If you have a leaking drain or sewer line, this can help us find where the issue is, what’s causing it, and how to best proceed with fixing it.

Line Tracing

Do you know where the water and sewer lines are in your home? If you’re like most homeowners, you more than likely have no idea what path they take throughout your home. This is where line tracing services come in. Line tracing is a service where a plumber maps out the lines in your home, showing you where they run. This is extremely valuable information to have as it can greatly reduce the amount of searching that needs to be done when looking for a leak. If you have a serious issue like a slab leak, knowing where your plumbing lines are can save you an immense amount of critical time and money.

If you’re planning on building an addition to your home, installing a new sink or wet bar, or even just moving a sink or water fixture to a new location, you need to know where your lines are. Where are you going to tap in to get running water to this fixture? Are you going to have both hot and cold water? Is your proposed location practical, or is it going to require running an entirely new plumbing branch that adds too much cost to the project? These are all questions that can be answered with a line tracing service.

To schedule your leak detection or line tracing service, call Plumbing Plus at now!