FAQ

For a house in Des Plaines, an estimated $150 to $400, quoted before the visit and separate from any repair. Where it lands depends on how much is still unknown when we arrive: a loss the free tests have already pinned to the hot side is quicker than basement water that might be river, sewer, ground or supply. A buried line under a poured driveway can run toward an estimated $300 to $800, and you hear that on the phone rather than on the day.

Often because a reading caught up, not because a pipe broke. Des Plaines bills every two months from a remote reader outside the house, and the city asks owners with inside meters to call in an inside reading once a year, because a slow or stalled remote can under-record for months. Compare the dial on the meter with the reading on the bill first. If they match and the bill is still high, turn every fixture off and watch the low-flow indicator; movement means something inside is running. In Waycinden Park the bill comes from Illinois American, so ask it how your meter is read.

Split the plumbing in halves until one half is left. Fixtures off and the dial moving puts the loss inside; closing the water heater's cold inlet and seeing the dial stop puts it on the hot side; a few drops of food coloring in each toilet tank clears or convicts the toilets. If the dial never moves but water still appears where the service pipe enters through the foundation wall, the buried stretch before an inside meter is the suspect, and that part needs listening equipment, thermal imaging or tracer gas.

In Des Plaines the real question is the b-box to the house, and that stretch belongs to the owner. City code has the city maintaining the shutoff valve in the b-box near the sidewalk, and the owner maintaining the service line from there to the building. Because code also puts the meter inside near where the pipe enters, the meter sits at the house end of that run, not the street end. In Waycinden Park, where Illinois American Water is the utility, ask Illinois American where its part stops.

Call whoever can tell you what kind of water it is, because the right trade depends on that. Clean water that turns up in dry weather is supply, and ours to find. Water rising through a floor drain is the sewer, and the city's Flood Rebate Program helps toward backwater valves and overhead sewers. Water at the joint between floor and wall after rain is a drainage job, and river water is the river. We will say which you have even when the answer is that you do not need us.

Usually, yes, if your pressure holds and no boil notice has reached your address. A break in the street main is the city's to repair and is not a leak on your property. Des Plaines sends precautionary boil notices to the blocks around a break rather than citywide, as it did during the run of main breaks in January 2024, so follow the notice if one arrives. Water surfacing near your own curb box with nothing broken in the street may be a service line instead.

It depends on what the detection finds, which is why the two are quoted apart. Locating is normally a single visit. A joint in an open basement ceiling can often be repaired the same day, while a buried service line five feet down means digging and usually a city permit for the repair. We locate the leak, mark it and put it in writing; the repair is a separate written quote from whichever plumber you choose.

When the source is unknown, yes, because the alternative is opening walls or digging a five-foot trench on a guess. When the free tests already point at a toilet or a dripping faucet, no, and you will hear that from us on the call. An estimated $150 to $400 buys a marked location and the evidence for it, which keeps the repair to one opening and gives you something to hand to any plumber you like.