Buried Supply Lines
The run from the boundary meter to the house, across verges, lawns and paving. The most common find, and the one that hides best in soft ground.
Home / Leak Detection
Leak detection in Alberton is the single most common reason people phone a plumber here, and the reason is structural rather than bad luck. We trace the line acoustically and thermally, mark the leak, and break out one spot instead of opening the driveway on a guess. Detection and the repair are quoted as two separate numbers. If the water is visible and running, go to emergency plumbing instead.
Before you send this, run the meter test: every tap off, then watch the meter for two minutes. Tell us what it did and you will get a far more useful answer back.
If it is losing water and you cannot see where, it is findable. Pools have their own method and their own page: see pool leak detection in Alberton.
The run from the boundary meter to the house, across verges, lawns and paving. The most common find, and the one that hides best in soft ground.
Acoustic tracing along the line plus thermal imaging to catch the plume where water moves under a floor, so one section of screed comes up rather than a room.
Damp patterns that do not match the room's ventilation, isolated with a pressure test to prove which circuit is actually losing before anything is opened.
A failed inlet valve passing water straight into the pan, day and night, without a sound or an overflow. Cheap to fix and expensive to ignore.
An overflow discharging quietly onto a flowerbed. It reads as a leak on the meter and it is a warning about the geyser at the same time.
Photographs of the leak as found, the location recorded, and an itemised invoice, which is what an insurer or a municipal billing query actually needs.
Almost a third of the water the City of Ekurhuleni buys from Rand Water is lost to leaks before it gets to anybody. That is the scale of the problem in the ground under this town, and the City has been working on its own side of it: 750 pressure reducing valves refurbished specifically to bring background leakage down, and an estimated R3 billion needed to replace ageing asbestos and steel water mains across the metro.
What that number does not cover is the pipework on your side of the meter, which is yours. And the same conditions that are eating the municipal network are working on your supply line too. The City manages demand by reducing pressure in high-consumption areas and closing reservoir outlet valves at night so storage can build back up, which means the line running from your boundary to your house drains down and re-pressurises every single day. Buried pipe does not wear out under steady pressure. It fails under cycling.
Then the ground hides the evidence. Alberton drains into the Natalspruit, which joins the Klip River, a catchment that was historically an extensive marsh described in the literature as acting like a large natural sponge. Soft, water-retentive ground takes what a pinhole gives it. So the classic sign, a permanently green patch or a puddle that never dries, often never appears here, and the first anyone knows is a bill that has gone up by a third with nothing changed in the house.
That is why we start at the meter and not at the symptom. Every tap off, every toilet settled, then watch the dial. A turning meter with nothing running is proof, and it turns a vague worry into a defined job. From there the trace is methodical: isolate circuits to narrow which line is losing, listen along the route with ground microphones, and use thermal imaging where water moving under a slab leaves a temperature signature. The leak gets marked with paint before a single tool comes out of the vehicle.
What we will not do: quote you for detection, arrive, and then produce a second and larger number for actually finding it. The detection price is the detection price. The repair is quoted separately once we know what has broken, and you agree that figure before it starts.
Do this first. It costs nothing and it changes what you need from us.
Four steps, and the price is fixed at step one.
We confirm there is a loss before charging you to look for one.
Circuits shut one at a time to narrow the line, then acoustic and thermal tracing along it.
Paint on the spot, agreed with you, and one break-out instead of a trench.
No second quotation for finding it once we are already on your property.
Cost, the boundary, and how to tell a leak from a billing estimate.
Detection and repair are two separate jobs and we price them that way, with the detection figure given to you before we start and the repair quoted only once we know what we are actually repairing. We will not give you a detection price and then produce a second, larger number for finding the leak once we are standing in your yard. If the trace turns out to be quick, the price does not go up because the leak was easy, and if the property has two supply lines or no isolating valves we tell you that affects the figure before we begin.
Shut every tap in the house, the toilets included, and make sure nothing is filling. Then go to the municipal meter on your boundary and watch the dial or the star wheel for two minutes. If it is turning, water is leaving the system with nothing using it, and that is a leak on your side of the meter. If it is completely still and your bill is still high, the problem is usage or a billing estimate rather than a leak. That test costs nothing and it is the first thing we ask you to do.
Two reasons that compound each other. The City of Ekurhuleni manages demand by reducing pressure in high-consumption areas and closing reservoir outlet valves at night, so the network under and around your property empties and re-pressurises daily. Fatigue like that finds pinholes. And Alberton drains into the Natalspruit and on into the Klip River, a catchment that was historically marshland, so water escaping a buried pipe often soaks away into soft ground instead of surfacing on the lawn where you would see it.
No, and that is the entire point of detecting before excavating. We trace the line, listen along it, look for the thermal signature of water where it should not be, and narrow the leak to a marked spot. Then one section comes up. The alternative, opening trenches along a route until water appears, is what turns a repair into a reinstatement bill, and on a paved driveway the making-good usually costs more than the plumbing did.
You do. The municipal connection is Ekurhuleni's responsibility up to and including the meter, and everything on the house side of that meter is the property owner's, including the buried run across the verge and the garden. That boundary is worth knowing before anyone starts work, because it decides whether you are logging a call with the City or booking a plumber. We will tell you which side of it your leak sits on, and we will say so even when the answer means there is no job here for us.
Yes, and those are the ones worth detecting properly rather than guessing at. Under a slab we work acoustically along the line and use thermal imaging to pick up the warm or cold plume where water is moving through the floor. In walls the give-away is usually a damp pattern that does not match the room's ventilation, plus a pressure test that isolates which circuit is losing. The aim is the same: mark one spot, break out one spot.
It is the most common version of this call. A leak on a buried supply line has nowhere to show itself if the ground takes the water, and a toilet with a failed inlet valve can pass a startling volume silently into the pan without ever overflowing. A weeping geyser overflow discharging onto a flowerbed is another that people walk past daily. All three are invisible and all three show up on the meter test.
Sometimes, and it depends on the City's policy at the time and on you being able to prove the leak existed and was repaired. What helps is evidence, which is why we photograph the leak as found, record the location, and give you an itemised invoice that names the repair. We cannot promise you a credit and we will not pretend otherwise, but we can make sure you have the documentation to ask for one.
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Losing water somewhere in Alberton with nothing to show for it? Send the details through and you will get a fixed figure for the trace, with nothing owed for asking.