Advanced, Non-Invasive, and Precise Water Leak Detection, Locating, and Repair Service in the Greater San Jose Area.
Water Leaks drive up your monthly utility bills and, at worst, can damage your landscape and your home’s foundation. If you suspect a water leak but cannot find it, Freedom Underground offers top-end, non-invasive leak detection service with our acoustic and tracer-gas equipment. Every plumber can dig up and repair a leak but no one can fix a leak they cannot find. Save time and disruption to your landscape by zeroing in on the leak location before digging.
Our tools and methods are highly sensitive, and most importantly, highly accurate.
Usually, as a first step, we use a tracer gas leak detector system. We isolate and then inject a pipe section with a non-toxic, non-flammable, and safe tracer gas mixture of 5% hydrogen and 95% nitrogen. The tracer gas will escape the pipe at any leak point and rise to the surface where we can detect it. This system will work even through concrete slabs, walls, floors, and over 10 feet underground.
An example of such an isolation is between the water meter and the main shutoff valve at the side of the home. We find the majority of the leaks using this method.
If the environment is not too noisy, we can, alternatively, use an acoustic detector. Even a small leak will make some noise which can be detected with the right equipment.
The other time we may want to use the acoustic detector is if the water line is PVC and lacks a tracer line, a common construction in the 1980s. Back then, a tracer wire on plastic, underground pipe was not required as it is today. By using a “thumper” device that pulses water within the pipe, we can detect where the pipe lies underground by listening for the noise.
By zeroing in on the area of the leak, we save time, money and disruption to the landscape by only digging in the area we detected the leak.
If you suspect you may have a water leak but cannot easily find it, we can. We will find the leak and offer a free estimate for a quick repair. Costs for our Leak Detection Service are $375 for the first hour and $175 for any additional hour needed. Most leak detections will not take more than an hour. If you decide to use us for your repair, we will credit you the costs of the Detection Service.
Do you have a water leak but cannot find it? Call us at (408) 693-6018 or use our contact form. If you just need a repair estimate, we can do that as well.
Below is a video example of the moment we found a leak for a customer in Santa Clara. To pinpoint the spot of the leak, we used our Sewerin VARIOTEC 460 system which you see in the below video. The leak was on an irrigation line and we detected the leak at a 90 elbow, right before an irrigation valve. The line branched off from there and continued across a driveway to irrigate a planting area. We also detected a small leak at one of the irrigation valves located on the far side of the driveway. The valve would not fully close and needed replacing.
The water leak fix, in this instance, was to dig in the lawn to replace a 90 elbow, and also replace the faulty irrigation valve. Both were relatively easy fixes and we recommended the homeowner ask their gardener to make the repairs as the least costly solution.
In this short video, we were right above the location of a water leak in our client’s lawn area. The meter is on the other side of the sidewalk. This leak, in conjunction with the faulty irrigation valve, was costing over $400 a month in wasted water. Above ground, there was no indication of the leak as the ground was not oversaturated. The customer had already asked their gardener to try and find the leak and it was not obvious.