What leak detection actually is
It is a process of elimination carried out in a set order, by someone who has done it before.
A leak announces itself in only three ways — it makes a noise, it moves water, and it drops pressure. Everything in the toolkit is built around one of those three. Nobody has an instrument that points at a leak through a slab and says "there". What we have is a method for ruling out every place the leak is not, until one place is left.
That matters because the alternative is guessing, and guessing on a buried line means opening ground that did not need opening.
The steps
1. Confirm water is actually going somewhere
The meter is the starting point. With the property shut down, a meter that keeps moving is hard evidence of a loss, and the rate it moves gives a rough sense of the size of it. That is our first check on arrival, not something you need to do before we get there.
2. Split the property into sections
A typical Bull Creek house has more separate runs than people expect. The service line from the meter to the house. Cold internal. Hot internal. Garden taps. Retic. Sometimes a bore, a pool top-up, a granny flat or a patio kitchen. Each gets isolated in turn.
The point is to stop looking at "the house" and start looking at one line. On plenty of jobs this step alone answers the question — a single valve closed and the meter stops.
3. Pressure test the suspect line
The isolated section is brought up to pressure and watched. A line that holds is eliminated. A line that bleeds down is where the rest of the day goes. This is also what separates a real leak from a running toilet or a dripping mixer, which are common and much cheaper answers than an underground break.
4. Listen along the run
Water escaping a pressurised pipe makes a sound, and acoustic equipment picks that sound up through soil, concrete, paving and tile. Moving along the line and comparing the signal narrows it toward the loudest point.
Bull Creek's sand helps here, oddly enough. It carries the signal cleanly compared with rubble fill, though it also means there is rarely a wet patch to point us in the right direction in the first place.
5. Mark the spot
The leak is marked on the ground as a point before anything is opened. Then you get a written price to repair it. That is the order it happens in — located, priced, then repaired. Never priced against a guess.
What we detect
Water leaks under the slab
Warm floor, damp skirting, drumming tiles, a musty smell in one room. Slab leak detection in Bull Creek
Service line leaks
The run from the meter at the front boundary to the house. Long, buried, and the single most common source of a mystery bill on a detached block.
Hidden leaks in walls and ceilings
A stain that grows, paint that bubbles, a cornice that has gone soft. Hidden water leaks
Retic and garden line leaks
Easy to miss because they are on a timer. A leak on a retic line only shows itself while the system is running, then stops and hides.
Leaking and cracked drains
Drains fail with age too, and a drain leaking into sand shows up as ground movement rather than water. Blocked drains
Gas leaks
Carried out under gas licence 13098. Bull Creek is a mains gas suburb, so this is regular work here. If you can smell gas now, get everyone outside, leave switches and flames alone, and ring from outside the house.
What it is worth doing first
If the pipe has already let go and water is running, detection is not the job — stopping it is. Shut the water off at the meter if you safely can, and ring us. That is an emergency call, not a detection one. Emergency plumbing
Detection is for the leak you cannot see: the bill, the damp patch, the meter that will not sit still.
Why it is worth paying someone to find it properly
Two reasons, and they are both money.
The repair gets smaller. A leak marked to a point is a small excavation or a single lifted section of floor. A leak "somewhere along that side of the house" is a trench. The detection work almost always costs less than the ground you avoid opening.
The bill stops sooner. A leak on a Bull Creek block can run for a full quarter without a puddle. Every week it runs is water you are paying for. And Water Corporation customers whose hidden leak is found and repaired by a licensed plumber may be eligible for an allowance of up to 50% of the estimated water lost — Water Corporation sets the conditions and decides, but the repair is what makes the question worth asking. High water bill in Bull Creek
What you get from us
A licensed plumber and gas fitter
Plumbing licence 8396 and gas licence 13098, both held by Tim, who does the work himself.
$0 call-out fee
No charge to attend. That does not change if the answer turns out to be simple.
A free written quote
Once the leak is located, you get the repair price in writing before anything starts. Transparent pricing, no hidden costs, and no obligation to go ahead.
Quick response, inside our hours
Monday to Friday, 7:00am to 4:00pm. A leak gets worse while it waits, so we do not sit on them.
Based next door
Leeming shares a boundary with Bull Creek.
Where we do it
- BatemanWA
- LeemingWA
- WinthropWA
- MurdochWA
- RossmoyneWA
- WillettonWA
- ShelleyWA
- RivertonWA
- BrentwoodWA
- BooragoonWA
Bull Creek is the centre of the patch, and the suburbs around it get the same job. All service areas · Questions we get asked