When a water bill suddenly doubles, most people blame the utility. In our experience across Austin, the meter is usually right and something in the house is quietly leaking. Far more often than not it's a running toilet, an underground supply line, or a pinhole leak in a wall — all of them fixable for a fraction of what the wasted water costs.
Start with the water meter test. Turn off every fixture and appliance in the house, then look at the meter. If the low-flow indicator is still moving with everything off, water is going somewhere. Note the reading, wait an hour without using any water, and check again. Any movement over that hour is a leak, no guesswork involved.
Toilets are the most common offender. A flapper that no longer seals lets water slip from the tank into the bowl around the clock — hundreds of gallons a day on an older valve. The dye test is free: drop a few drops of food coloring into the tank, wait fifteen minutes without flushing, and if color appears in the bowl, the flapper or fill valve is your leak. Parts cost a few dollars and we replace them every week.
Then walk the house. Warm spots on the floor, a musty smell that won't air out, baseboards or drywall that warp or stain with no spill to explain it, or the sound of running water when nothing is on — each of these points to a leak inside a wall or under the slab. Don't open anything up to hunt for it; modern leak detection finds the source without turning your home into a construction site.
One Austin-specific note: slab foundations and shifting clay soil. Much of Central Texas sits on expansive clay that swells when it's wet and shrinks in a drought, and that movement flexes the copper lines under your home. A slab leak often announces itself as a warm strip of tile or a water heater that runs nonstop — the hot line is leaking under the floor and the tank keeps refilling with heated water.
If none of that turns anything up but the bill is still climbing, it's time for a proper diagnosis — pressure testing the supply lines and isolating sections of the system need instruments rather than guesswork. Call Smoke Test Client at +1 512 555 0166 for a free estimate anywhere in the Austin area.