Every Utah summer brings the same mystery: water bills that triple from May to September. Some of that's legitimate irrigation — and some of it is a system leaking underground where nobody sees it. He…
Every Utah summer brings the same mystery: water bills that triple from May to September. Some of that's legitimate irrigation — and some of it is a system leaking underground where nobody sees it. Here's how to tell the difference.
Sprinkler systems run when you're asleep, bury their failures underground, and lose water into soil that absorbs the evidence. A cracked lateral, a weeping valve, or a head broken below grade can waste thousands of gallons per cycle while the lawn looks merely 'well watered.' By the time a geyser erupts from a head, the system has been leaking for months.
A summer bill wildly out of proportion to your lot and watering schedule. Zones with chronically soggy spots or, paradoxically, dry spots (a broken line starves downstream heads). Water pooling near valve boxes. The system running when it shouldn't — a stuck valve. Hissing at the backflow preventer or valve manifold. And the meter test: run it with irrigation off, then watch whether the meter behaves differently after a cycle.
Walk each zone while it runs — look for geysers, misting (broken nozzles), and heads that don't pop up fully. Check valve boxes for standing water. Verify the controller's programming — a power outage can reset schedules to daily watering. And compare zone-by-zone: a zone using far more water than its head count justifies has a leak.
Lateral lines run underground between valves and heads — when the leak is in the lateral, or the mainline feeding the valves, finding it means line tracing and acoustic work, not digging up the yard on hunches. If the meter runs with the irrigation off but the house valve open, or a zone's usage is inexplicable, that's a detection job.
Main Water Line Leak Detection — learn more →
Enormous amounts — a single cracked lateral can lose thousands of gallons per watering cycle, all summer long. It's the most common cause of shocking summer bills.
Not before diagnosing. Most irrigation leaks are single-point failures — one valve, one lateral break. Locate it, fix it, save the system.
Yes — drip lines fail at emitters, connections, and filters. The same systematic approach applies, adapted to low-pressure systems.
Don't wait for the damage to announce itself. Call now — we're open 24/7 — or request an inspection online and we'll respond promptly.