Leak detection
The equipment and sequence that fixes the failure point before anyone digs.
Learn morePipes and repiping
Main water line repair: the pipe between the meter and your house
A failing service line rarely announces itself indoors. It shows up as a wet strip in the yard, a meter that turns with everything shut off, or pressure that has been quietly falling for a year, and it is the property owner’s pipe.
Lines are open right now:
(833) 472-2088
Meter turning with the taps off? That is a leak on your line.
Meter to house is yours
The utility owns its side of the meter, you own the rest.
Found before dug
Located and depth-marked so one hole does the job.
Pressure or volume
Two different faults with two different repairs.
Water running now
Emergency dispatch any hour if the line has let go.
Symptoms
Six signs, in the order people usually notice them
A wet or unusually green strip in the yard. Clean water surfacing along the route of the line, often brightest in the driest week of the year. In winter it shows up as a patch that never holds snow.
The meter turns with everything off. The single most useful test you can run yourself. Shut every fixture, find the meter, and watch the low-flow indicator. Movement means water is escaping somewhere past the meter, and if the house is dry, it is escaping underground.
A bill that stepped up and stayed up. A service line leak is constant, so the bill does not spike and recover, it rises to a new level and holds.
Pressure or volume dropping off. A pinhole leak bleeds pressure. A corroded or scaled line strangles volume, which shows up as a shower that dies when someone starts the washing machine.
Dirty or air-filled water at every tap. A compromised line can draw in soil and air, particularly after a utility outage or a pressure event on the main.
Water surfacing in the street or at the meter box. Worth a call to the utility as well as a plumber, this is exactly where the ownership boundary sits, and it costs nothing to establish which side has the problem.
Where your responsibility starts
In most Idaho jurisdictions the utility owns the main and the meter, and the property owner owns the service line from the meter to the house, including the length under the sidewalk, the driveway and the front lawn. Boundaries vary, so a call to your water provider before excavation is always worth the five minutes. If the leak is on their side, they fix it.
Located and depth-marked before anyone opens ground.
Diagnosis
Locating it precisely so one excavation does the work
A buried water line does not surface above the leak. Water follows the path of least resistance, along the pipe bedding, down a gravel driveway base, under a slab, and can emerge fifteen feet from the actual failure or not at all. Digging where it is wet is how a small repair becomes a long trench.
Meter isolation. First step and it is nearly free: shut the house valve and watch the meter. Still turning means the leak is between the meter and the valve, which is the buried run. Stopped means the loss is inside the building, which is a different job.
Pressure testing. Isolating the service line and watching pressure decay tells us the size of the loss, distinguishes a pinhole from a break, and confirms whether the line is worth repairing at all before anyone opens ground.
Acoustic location. Pressurised water escaping through a small hole makes a specific noise that travels through pipe and soil. Ground microphones and correlators narrow it to a small area, which is what a precise excavation needs.
Line tracing. A transmitter and receiver map the route and depth of the pipe across the yard, which frequently is not the straight line from meter to house that everybody assumes.
Utility locates. Before any dig. Gas, power, communications and irrigation share that ground, and in older neighbourhoods the records are imperfect. This step is not optional and it takes time to arrange.
Full detail on the equipment and the sequence is on the leak detection page.
The decision
When a patch is right and when it is throwing money away
A spot repair makes sense when the line is otherwise sound, modern copper or plastic in good condition, a single failure with an identifiable cause, such as a rock bearing on the pipe, damage from a fence post or a landscaping dig, or a bad fitting from an earlier repair. Dig one hole, cut out the damaged length, couple in new pipe, backfill properly.
Replacement is the honest answer when the material itself is the problem. Galvanized steel service lines corrode from the inside and fail repeatedly once they start. Polybutylene fails at fittings and along the pipe. Thin-wall copper in aggressive soil develops pinholes in sequence, the second and third leak follow the first within a year or two. Patching a line like that is buying the same excavation two more times.
Three questions that decide it. What is the pipe made of and how old is it? Is this the first leak or the third? And what is on the surface between the meter and the house, because if the answer is a concrete driveway, the cost of getting to the pipe dwarfs the cost of the pipe, and you want to be down there once.
What new lines are. Typically type K copper or an approved polyethylene, sized to the fixture count and the length of the run, with correct bedding, a tracer wire on plastic so the next person can find it, and burial below local frost depth. Fitting and material standards are set by the adopted plumbing code and the water provider’s requirements; permits and inspection are normal.
Second leak on the same line is a replacement conversation.
What drives the price
Length, depth and what sits on top
The pipe is a small part of the bill. Almost everything else is access.
Length of the run. A city lot with the meter at the sidewalk is one job. A rural property with two hundred feet from the meter to the house, or a well line from an outbuilding, is another.
Depth. Idaho frost depth means service lines are buried deep, deeper in the mountain valleys and the eastern high country than in the Treasure Valley. Depth drives excavation time, spoil volume and whether shoring is needed.
Surface. Lawn is the best case. A concrete driveway, pavers, a mature landscape, a garage slab or a public sidewalk each cost twice, once to remove and once to reinstate.
Trenchless pull-through. Where the route is reasonably straight and the ends are accessible, a new line can be pulled or bored through with only entry and exit pits. It saves the driveway and the landscaping, and on properties where surface reinstatement would dominate the bill it often costs less overall than open-cut. It needs suitable soil and a route without a maze of other utilities crossing it.
Permits, right of way and traffic control. Anything in the public right of way brings permitting and inspection requirements that vary by city, and occasionally traffic control.
Reinstatement. Compacted backfill so the trench line does not sink over the next two winters, and the surface genuinely put back. Quotes that stop at the pipe are not comparable to quotes that include this.
Idaho conditions
Frost, well systems and pressure problems that look like leaks
Frozen service lines. In a hard winter, shallow sections freeze, commonly where the line runs under an unheated slab, through a crawl space wall, or where a driveway has been plowed clear of insulating snow so frost drives deeper than usual. A frozen service line means no water at all rather than a leak, and thawing it needs care rather than a torch. See pipe thawing and frozen pipe repair.
Lines that froze and then leaked. Ice splits pipe and the split only shows once flow returns. A service line that lost water in January and now has a wet patch in the yard in March did both.
Private wells. A great many properties in the mountain valleys, along the western border and across rural eastern Idaho and the Panhandle are on wells. There is no meter to watch, the buried run from a wellhead or pressure tank to the house behaves like a service line, and a leak on that run shows up as a pump that cycles constantly. Pump, pressure tank and control work is covered on well pump and water system service.
Pressure problems that are not leaks. Low pressure throughout a house can be a failed pressure regulator, a partially closed main valve, a clogged whole-house filter or scale in an old galvanized line rather than anything escaping. High pressure is its own hazard and shortens the life of every fixture and appliance in the building. See water pressure regulator service.
Old materials still in the ground. Galvanized steel service lines are common in Idaho’s pre-war housing, and where one is still in service the volume problem people complain about is usually corrosion narrowing the pipe. That conversation belongs with galvanized pipe replacement.
Driveway over the route? Ask what a pull-through would take.
How it runs
From wet lawn to water back on
Diagnose, locate, then dig once, with utility locates arranged before anything opens ground.
1. Confirm and isolate
Meter check, house valve isolation and a pressure test to establish that the loss is on the buried run and how big it is. If the leak turns out to be on the utility side, you find that out before spending anything.
2. Locate and mark
Acoustic location and line tracing to fix the failure point, route and depth on the surface. Utility locates are called in and the excavation is planned around what else is down there.
3. Repair or replace, then reinstate
A spot repair on a sound line, or a new service pulled or trenched in where the material has failed. Pressure tested, permitted and inspected where required, backfill compacted and the surface put back.
Coverage
Service line work statewide
Supply line repairs run across all six regions we cover, and the conditions differ genuinely: shallow-set older lines and concrete driveways through the Treasure Valley, deep frost burial in the mountain valleys and eastern high country, long rural runs and well systems along the western border and through the Panhandle.
Questions
Main water line questions
The usual division in Idaho is that the utility owns the main and the meter and the property owner owns the service line from the meter to the building. The length under the sidewalk and the front lawn is generally yours.
That varies by jurisdiction, so call your water provider before excavating. If water is surfacing at or upstream of the meter it may well be theirs, and it costs nothing to have them check.
Shut the main valve where the line enters the building, then watch the meter. If it still turns, the loss is between the meter and that valve, the buried run. If it stops, the water is going somewhere inside, and the search moves to walls, slabs and crawl spaces.
That single test tells us which of two very different jobs you have, and you can run it before calling.
Repair where the pipe is sound and the failure has an obvious external cause. Replace where the material is the cause, galvanized steel, polybutylene, or thin copper in aggressive soil that has already leaked once.
The other factor is access. If reaching the pipe means cutting a concrete driveway, the excavation costs more than the pipe, and you do not want to pay for it twice in three years.
Often, yes. A trenchless pull-through or bore needs entry and exit pits rather than a continuous trench, and it is the standard approach where a driveway, patio or mature landscaping sits over the route.
It needs a reasonably straight route, suitable soil and a path clear of crossing utilities. Where those conditions do not hold, open-cut is the honest answer.
A spot repair is typically a single day, with water off for a few hours of it. A full replacement on a normal city lot is commonly one to two days including inspection and reinstatement, with water off for part of each day.
Long rural runs, deep burial, hard surfaces and frozen ground all extend it. The contractor tells you the expected outage before starting so you can plan around it.
It is priced by length, depth, soil, what sits on the surface and whether trenchless is viable, not by a flat rate. A short run through open lawn is a fraction of a long run under a concrete drive and a public sidewalk.
Permit fees, utility locates and surface reinstatement belong in the number. When comparing quotes, check that all three are included, because the cheap quote often stops at the pipe.
It might be, and there are cheaper things to rule out first: a partially closed main or meter valve, a failed pressure regulator, a clogged whole-house filter, or internal corrosion in an old galvanized line.
A pressure and flow test at the hose bib nearest the entry point separates a supply problem from a distribution problem in a few minutes, and it is the right first step before anyone talks about excavation.
Usually yes. Water service replacement generally requires a plumbing permit and inspection, and any work in the public right of way needs an excavation permit from the city or county, sometimes with traffic control.
Requirements and material standards vary by jurisdiction and water provider. The contractor handles the applications and the inspection appointments as part of the job.
Water running now, dispatch is open around the clock.
One excavation, in the right place
We confirm the loss is on your side of the meter, find it precisely, and fix it once. Call any hour, anywhere in Idaho.
(833) 472-2088