California's Water - Detecting and fixing leaks

In this ongoing series on water use and the drought in California, I wanted to next talk about detecting and fixing water leaks inside your home.  Last time I talked about water usage inside the home and how leaks are one of the largest "uses" of water in a typical home.  Now this is a typical or average home.  Many homes won't have any leaks, some will leak a lot - but an average home approximately 15% of all water use inside the house is wasted through leaks.  In this post I want to show how easy it is to locate and detect these leaks as well as fix them.

First step to detecting and fixing leaks is very easy and very obvious.  Simply walk around your house (inside and out) and look at every faucet, shower head, water fixture, etc. looking for a leak.  If it's leaking, make sure the knob was in the off position.  If the leak does not stop, if you have to tighten the knob with a lot of force to get it to stop, or if the leak resumes later on then chances are you need to replace the seals.  Almost all faucets and fixtures in the house use rubber seals, O-rings, and gaskets to create a water-tight seal.  But these rubber pieces don't last forever.  In time they crack and become brittle and hard causing them to not seal completely.  There is great news however.  You can buy new replacement rubber parts for cheap and easily install them.  Most major hardware stores have a section dedicated to rubber parts like these, and they usually only cost a few bucks.  Here's how to repair simple leaks like this:

1. Turn off the nearest water supply valve.  If the bathroom sink is leaking, under the sink are two shutoff valves (hot and cold).  If there is no shutoff valve, or if the shutdown valve itself is the part that is leaking, you'll have to shutoff water to the entire house.  This can be done outside where the water comes into your house.
2. Use tools (usually a wrench and/or screw driver) to disassemble the leaking part.  Fixtures are designed to be taken apart and have their rubber parts serviced, so if this step seems difficult then stop and use Google and/or youtube to search for your particular job.
3. Once you've removed the old rubber parts, take them to your local hardware store and find the identical replacement part.
4. Install the new, turn on the water and check for leaks.

Most hardware stores also sell large packages with dozens or hundreds of random sized rubber seals.  You can always buy a package like this (again, only a few bucks) and most likely have the part on hand thus saving you a trip to the hardware store while water is turned off.

After checking all the easy fixtures like faucets and shower heads, time to check the toilets.  Toilets are probably the largest source of leaks in the house, and therefore important to check them for leaks.  They leak so much water for several reasons.  First, if a leak develops people rarely realize because the leaked water is not visible.  If does not end up on the floor, or seen dripping from a faucet.  Instead it silently leaks into the sewer line.  Secondly, toilets are considered "gross" by most people, they don't want to touch them, so unless there is an obvious problem they will leave them alone.  Finally, a lot of people don't really know how a toilet works so they don't even know how to check a toilet for leaks.

Checking a toilet for leaks is fairly simple.  Only check a toilet that hasn't been flushed in hours, that way you don't misdiagnose a leak.  Start off by using a flashlight and shining a light on the water in the toilet bowl.  Get down on your hands and knees to look closely at the water.  If the water is perfectly smooth that's good, but if you see ripples on the water, especially at the edge where the water meets the porcelain then you probably have a leak.  The next check involves lifting the lid on the toilet tank.  Don't bother looking inside the toilet for leaks, often times the air in the top of the tank is so moist that water condenses and forms drops that may appear to be a leak.  Instead, get your ear close to the water fill tower (usually on the left-side of the tank) and carefully listen for water.  If you hear water then you most likely have a leak.  But probably the easiest check is to put dye tablets (or food coloring) into the toilet tank.  Check the toilet several hours later and see if the color appeared down in the bowl.  Fixing a toilet leak is as easy as a faucet.  Turn off the water, remove the rubber parts that are leaking, and replace with new parts from the hardware store.  Or better yet, buy the dual-flush conversion kit and replace all the rubber seals at the same time.

But what if you have a leak elsewhere?  What about pipes underground or in the walls, leaks in your appliances like dish washer, or irrigation system.  How do you check these for leaks?  Turns out there's a simple way to check for leaks - use your water meter.  This method will tell you if there is a leak anywhere in your house and give you an indication how large the leak is, but it won't tell you what is leaking.  So it will either give you piece of mind, or let you know you need to keep looking.

First, locate your house water meter.  Usually the water meter is located out front your house where your property connects to the municipal water supply, but it can be closer where the water enters the house, or even inside your garage or basement.  Here is a picture of my actual water meter.

Every water meter will be different, but most meters have 3 parts to them.  The first is a small triangle or star (I've highlighted mine in green), which is the low-flow or trickle indicator.  The second part is the needle which sweeps the entire gauge.  Lastly is the "odometer" reading in numbers.  The way a water meters works is the flow of water turns the low-flow triangle.  After X number of turns of the low-flow indicator, the needle will make one complete revolution around the dial.  For each revolution the odometer reading will advance a single digit.  My water meter measure cubic feet of water, but yours could measures gallons, or even something else like liters.

The important part here is the low-flow indicator, the rest you can ignore.  The low-flow indicator, as the name implies, is very sensitive to even small amounts of water flow.  Try it, watch your meter and turn on the garden hose.  That triangle will spin pretty fast.  To check for leaks using the low-flow indicator, first make sure no one in the house is using water.  Make sure no one will turn on the sink, flush a toilet, etc.  Also, make sure there's no laundry going, the ice maker won't turn on, etc.  Basically, all water use needs to stop during the duration of the test.  Look at the position of the triangle, then wait 5, 10, 20 minutes - the longer you wait the better.  After waiting look at the triangle again.  If the triangle moved then you have a leak.  How much it moves is also an indicator of the size of the leak.