Water Line Leak Detection in Des Plaines

Listen to it under pressure. Water forced through a crack makes a sound a ground microphone hears through soil, loudest straight above the leak. Here we start at the b-box and at the basement entry, the two places the line can be touched, then walk the run between them; where the sound is faint, tracer gas pushed into the line rises through the soil above the break.

Grass along the route from curb to house that stays greener or softer than the rest in dry weather, damp concrete where the line enters the basement, falling pressure, and sometimes a hiss at the curb box. A climbing bill usually is not among them here, since an inside meter only counts water that reaches it, and a leak in that stretch escapes first.

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.

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.