On town water you watch the meter. On tank supply there is no meter, so you listen to the pump. Either way we locate the fault before anything is opened, which on acreage saves a great deal of ground.
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Every piece of leak advice you will read begins the same way: turn everything off and watch the water meter. Across a good part of this district that instruction is useless, because there is no meter to watch.
On rainwater supply the pressure pump is the substitute, and it is a better witness than most people realise. A pump should sit completely silent when no tap is open. If it starts up periodically with the house still, it is repressurising a line that is losing water, and that is a leak whether or not anything is visible. The interval between starts is a rough measure of how fast.
The stakes are different too. On town water a leak announces itself as a bill, which is annoying but survivable. On tank supply it announces itself as running out of water, sometimes in the middle of a dry stretch, and it will have been quietly draining the tank for weeks beforehand with nothing above ground to show for it.
Add the distances. A service run from the tank or the meter to a house set well back from the road is long, and much of it is buried under ground you would rather not open. That is why we locate acoustically and mark the position before anything is dug, rather than trenching along a line and hoping.
On town water it is the meter at the boundary. On tank supply it is the pump switch and the valve at the tank outlet. We will talk you through whichever you have while the van moves.
A pressure pump holds the system at a set pressure and starts when the pressure falls, which is exactly what a leak does. So a pump that runs when nothing is being used is reporting one.
On a rainwater property there is no water meter, so the standard test everybody else uses is simply not available to you.
The pump is the substitute, and it is a good one. Listen for it at night when the house is quiet and nothing is running.
On town water a leak costs money. On tank supply it costs you the water itself, which in a dry stretch is a considerably more immediate problem.
So a slow leak on a tank property is worth finding sooner than the same leak would be on mains, and the consequence is a delivery rather than a bill.
That is the practical reason to take a cycling pump seriously rather than treating it as a quirk.
When nothing comes out, the instinct is to assume the tank has run dry. Frequently the water is there and the pump has tripped, lost prime, or failed.
Check the tank level and check whether the pump has power and has tripped a breaker, before assuming the worst.
That is a two minute check that saves a call-out surprisingly often on this district's properties.
A house set back from the road can be a considerable distance from its supply, whether that is a tank, a pump or a meter, and all of that run is buried.
More pipe means more to fail and more ground for water to disappear into without anything showing at the surface.
So a loss on that run can be substantial and invisible, and the pump cycling is frequently the only signal.
On low-lying ground in this district, a patch that stays wet gets attributed to the ground rather than to a pipe, and frequently that is correct.
But it is also exactly how a slow leak hides on a floodplain, and the two are indistinguishable by looking.
Isolating the pump and watching whether it stays off is the test that separates them, and it costs nothing.
Once a loss is confirmed, we shut sections in turn at whatever valves exist and watch which one stops the pump cycling.
That works on tank supply exactly as meter isolation works on town water, and it narrows a long buried run to a manageable length.
Acoustic listening then takes it to a point, which on acreage is the difference between one hole and a trench.
Where the property is on mains, shut every tap and appliance and watch the meter for a quarter of an hour. Movement with nothing running is a genuine loss.
Then isolate the hot water and read it again to establish which side it is on.
The relief valve outlet is worth checking before assuming the worst on a hot result, because a valve discharging steadily reads identically.
On a tank property that means the pump switch and any isolating valves between the tank and the house, and on mains it means the meter tap.
Find them on a dry afternoon, check they work, and leave a torch nearby. On acreage they are frequently a walk from the house.
Learn the isolating valves indoors too, because closing one handles a specific failure without shutting the property down.
The braided hoses under vanities and behind cisterns last around five years and fail all at once, at full pressure, frequently while nobody is home.
On tank supply a failure also empties the tank, which turns a plumbing problem into a water supply problem within hours.
They are cheap and quick to replace, and out here the value of preventing one is higher than it is closer in.
Water follows the fall of a joist, the back of a stud or the top of a slab and appears wherever it finally escapes, which can be a room from the failure.
Underground on a long run it may never surface at all, particularly on ground that is damp for its own reasons.
So the wet spot is a starting point rather than an address, and its absence proves nothing.
Floodwater moves ground, and ground movement is hard on buried pipework and on the fittings at either end of it.
So a leak appearing in the months after a flood is worth connecting to the flood rather than treating as a coincidence.
It is also worth documenting for the same reason, because the cause matters to more than just the repair.
Dates, findings, photographs and the invoice from a licensed plumber. Together those describe a concealed leak and its repair in a way anybody assessing it can follow.
Sydney Water has an allowance for exactly that situation, with conditions they set and publish.
We are not assessors and will not advise on eligibility. We will make sure the record exists and is accurate.
Quoted before we start. Indicative 2026 Sydney ranges. Locating precisely is what keeps the excavation small, and on a long rural service run that is worth considerably more than the detection costs.
Waived when you book through this site. Booked another way it is up to $180.
Acoustic and thermal along the run, with the position marked on the surface.
Isolated, contained and repaired where the failure is accessible.
Priced by length and access. On acreage the length is usually the whole story.
The market rate for nights and weekends. Told to you before we come out.
Meter at the boundary, or the pump switch and tank valve. We talk you through whichever you have while the van is already moving.
Water off and whatever has escaped contained before diagnosis begins. Nothing gets quoted while water is still moving.
Acoustic along the line, thermal where hot water is involved. We mark the spot so any opening is small and deliberately placed.
Fixed figure approved first. On tank supply we check the pump has not been damaged running against the leak, because they often have.
That is a leak until proven otherwise, and on tank supply it is draining the thing you rely on. Time the gap between starts and tell us when you ring.
Call 1300 381 569If you are on town water, turn it off at the meter, usually at the front boundary, clockwise until it stops. If you are on tank supply, switch the pressure pump off at its isolation switch and close the valve at the tank outlet, which does the same job. On a large block either of those can be a walk, so it is worth knowing where yours is before you need it. If water is anywhere near a light fitting, a power point or the switchboard, kill the power at the main switch first. Then open the lowest tap you have so the pressure drains out there rather than into a ceiling.
This is the genuine problem out here, because every piece of leak advice ever written starts with watching the water meter, and you do not have one. Use the pump instead. Turn every tap and appliance off, then listen. A pressure pump should sit silent. If it kicks in periodically with nothing running, water is escaping somewhere and the pump is repressurising the line to make up for it. That cycling is your meter. Time the gap between starts, because it tells us roughly how fast you are losing water before we even arrive.
Treat that as a leak until proven otherwise. On town water an escape shows up as a bill, which is unwelcome but at least arrives. On tank supply it shows up as running out of water, which is a considerably bigger problem and gives you no warning at all. A slow underground leak on a long rural service run can empty a tank steadily for weeks while everything above ground looks completely normal. If consumption has changed and the household has not, something is going somewhere.
On tank supply it is usually the pump rather than the water. Check whether the pump has power and whether its circuit has tripped, and check the tank level before assuming a fault, because a pump running dry is both the most common cause and the fastest way to destroy the pump itself. If the pump is running constantly and not building pressure, switch it off and ring us: at that point it is either drawing air or losing water, and leaving it running will cook it.
That is the point, and it matters more on acreage than anywhere. A service run from a tank or a meter to a house set well back from the road can be a long way, and trenching it speculatively is a lot of ground. We use acoustic listening along the line and thermal imaging where hot water is involved, then mark the position on the surface so any opening is one small hole in a known place.
Worth investigating rather than accepting, and worth being a little sceptical of the obvious explanation. On low-lying Hawkesbury ground people reasonably attribute persistent damp to the water table or to drainage, and often that is exactly right. But a pressurised line losing water underground produces an identical symptom and does it continuously, including through dry spells when everything around it has dried out. That last detail is the tell.
Usually the damage is and the pipe itself usually is not. Most policies cover water damage to the building and contents from a sudden burst, exclude the cost of repairing the failed pipe, and exclude damage from a leak that has been seeping gradually rather than bursting. On tank supply there is a further wrinkle worth knowing: the water you lost has no meter reading behind it and no utility allowance to claim against, so documenting the repair properly matters more, not less. Keep everything we give you.
Tell us whether you are on town water or tank supply, and whether the pump cycles with every tap off. Those two answers do most of the diagnosis before we arrive.
Fixed price agreed before the repair starts, and the position marked before anything is dug.
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