Underground Water Leak Detection in Marietta, GA
You’ve got a wet spot in the yard that won’t dry out, or the water bill jumped and nobody’s touched a fixture inside the house. That’s usually a buried line leak, not a house problem, and it’s what we deal with every week around Marietta and Cobb County. Georgia Water Leak Detection finds the leak with sound-based listening equipment, digital correlators, and pressure testing instead of a shovel and a guess, so you dig one small hole instead of trenching the whole yard.
Call (470) 454-5051 and we’ll walk you through what we find.
Signs You've Got a Leak Under the Yard
A few signs point to a leak outside the house instead of inside it.
- A patch of grass that stays soft and spongy no matter how dry the week's been. One stripe of lawn greener than everything around it, because it's getting fed by water that shouldn't be there. Water pooling at the curb or along the edge of the driveway with no rain to explain it.
- A dip or a soft spot where the ground has started to settle. Cracks or lifting in the driveway or the walkway. A drop in water pressure at the house, or a meter that keeps spinning after every fixture inside is shut off.
- Georgia's red clay soil plays a role too. It shrinks during dry spells and swells when it's saturated, and that movement stresses buried pipes and their joints over time. A line that's been solid can still crack where a joint flexes. Once it does, the clay holds the water in place until it finds a path to the surface.
- Sometimes it's the sound. A hiss or a trickle out by the meter, or under the yard if you get down close enough to listen. And in a Georgia summer, an irrigation leak is easy to miss, because the whole yard's already wet from the sprinklers doing their job.
Underground Water Lines We Check
Different buried lines fail in different ways, and what’s actually underground varies from property to property.
Different lines call for different tools, but the goal’s the same every time: find the exact point where water’s getting out before anybody digs. This page covers what’s buried outside the house. If the problem’s inside a wall or behind a fixture instead, our full water leak detection service page covers that side of it.
- The service line running from the meter to the house
- The lateral line, if the property has one
- Irrigation and sprinkler lines, which fail more than anything else on this list because there’s more pipe and more joints underground
- Outdoor spigots and hose bib lines
- Pool and spa plumbing, when that’s what’s on the property
- Lines running under a driveway, a patio, or a stretch of asphalt
- On commercial sites, supply lines under a parking lot
How We Track Down the Leak
Here’s the order we actually work in.
Meter isolation test
Shut off every fixture in the house and watch the meter. If it's still moving, the leak's outside, not inside.
Line tracing
We map where the buried pipe actually runs first. Most homeowners don't have this mapped, and guessing wrong is how a whole yard gets trenched for nothing.
Pressure testing
Isolate sections of line until the failing stretch is narrowed down.
Ground microphones
Listen along the mapped run for the escape point, through soil, concrete, or asphalt.
Digital correlators
On longer runs, two contact points and a correlator triangulate the spot between them.
Tracer gas
For lines too deep, too quiet, or buried under too much hardscape to hear.
Mark it
We flag the exact spot and the approximate depth, then walk you through the repair options.
That’s the whole point of doing it this way. One small, marked dig beats trenching a lawn, driveway, or irrigation zone.
Sometimes what looks like a yard problem turns out to be under the foundation instead. When that happens, it’s a different job, and our slab water leak detection page covers how we handle that one.
The Tools We Use to Locate Underground Water Leaks
Acoustic Listening and Ground Penetrating Equipment
Most underground water leaks make sound. Water escaping cracked pipes generates leak noise that travels through soil and along the pipe walls. Acoustic listening equipment picks that up.
A technician walks the mapped line with contact sensors, listening for the loudest point. An acoustic leak survey compares the sound profile along the line, and the loudest spot is usually right over the break.
When the leak is deeper or the pipes run under concrete, sound alone gets harder to read. That’s where ground penetrating tools come in. Thermal imaging cameras can show temperature differences on a slab or driveway where water is pooling underneath.
Infrared picks up the edge of a wet area even when the surface looks dry. These detection methods don’t replace listening; they narrow the search when listening can’t reach far enough.
Leak Detectors vs. Correlators
A standalone leak detector might get you close. Professional detection correlators get you to the exact joint or crack.
A correlator uses two sensors placed at known points along the pipe, measures how long the sound takes to reach each one, and calculates the exact distance to the break. That math is why a correlator can mark one spot instead of guessing with three test holes.
For deep lines or pipes buried under a driveway, the tracing step picks up where listening leaves off. A safe tracing gas is injected into the line and seeps out through the crack, rising through the soil. We track where it breaks the surface, and that marks the leak location. No digging required to find it
Irrigation Leaks in a Georgia Summer
Irrigation systems leak more than any other underground line we deal with in Marietta and Cobb County, and it makes sense. There’s more pipe, more valves, more joints, and all of it’s buried, doing its job, out of sight.
Cracked lateral
A cracked lateral. A valve stuck open. A riser that snapped off below grade. Any one of those can run water into the ground for weeks before anybody notices, since the system's whole job is putting water into the ground.
Pressure zones
Watch for a zone that won't hold pressure, heads that keep weeping between cycles, one patch of yard that's always soggy no matter the weather, or a water bill that climbs every summer when the system runs the most. We isolate the zone first, then narrow it down to the exact break.
Why Homeowners Call Us First for an Underground Water Leak
Detection and repair
Georgia Water Leak Detection does the finding and the fixing, so you're not paying one crew to locate the leak and a second one to dig it up. The detection fee is waived when we handle the repair.
Non-invasive equipment
Equipment matters here. A hardware-store water detector, or the rental leak detectors you can pick up for a weekend, will tell you something is wrong. They won't tell you where. Professional sound-based detection finds leaks through soil, concrete, and asphalt instead of just hinting at them.
Open seven days a week
We lean on equipment first and a shovel last. That protects the lawn, the irrigation system, and the driveway instead of tearing through all three to find one bad joint. Our technicians are licensed and insured, and we offer discounts for seniors and military. We're highly rated on Google, and we're open seven days a week with evening hours.
Areas We Serve
Georgia Water Leak Detection is based at 2985 Gordy Pkwy, Suite 116, Marietta, GA 30066, and we run underground leak jobs all over Cobb County. Cobb County is home base, but the truck goes where the leak is. That covers Marietta, Kennesaw, Austell, Roswell, and Woodstock, plus the rest of metro Atlanta including Sandy Springs, Atlanta, Brookhaven, Norcross, Alpharetta, Milton, and Tucker.
Not sure your address is in range? Call and ask. It usually is.
- Marietta
- Kennesaw
- Austell
- Roswell
- Woodstock
- Sandy Springs
- Atlanta
- Brookhaven
- Norcross
- Alpharetta
- Milton
- Tucker
Leak Questions We Hear a Lot
Here’s what people ask us most about hidden leaks, straight answers first.
Cost depends on how long the buried line run is, how deep it sits, and what’s on top of it. Soil is a lot easier to work with than concrete or asphalt. If the line hasn’t been mapped yet, tracing it first adds time. The one thing that doesn’t change: the detection fee is waived when we do the repair.
We start with a meter test to isolate the loss, then trace the line and use sound-based listening equipment, correlators, and pressure testing to narrow it down. The tracing step comes in when a line’s too deep or too quiet to hear. All of that happens before anyone touches a shovel.
Yes, that’s most of what sound-based listening and the tracing method are built for. Concrete and asphalt make the sound harder to read than open soil, so those jobs lean more on the tracing step and less on sound alone. Either way, we still mark one exact spot instead of breaking up the whole driveway to look for it.
Generally, the homeowner owns and is responsible for the line from the meter to the house, while the utility handles everything on the main side of the meter. That split can vary by city and by water provider, so confirm the specifics with whoever bills you for water.
A meter isolation test tells you for certain. Shut off every fixture inside the house, including any icemaker or auto-fill, and watch the meter for a few minutes. If it’s still turning with nothing running inside, the leak’s outside, somewhere between the meter and the house or further out under the yard.
Yes, both matter. PVC pipes carry sound differently than metal or copper pipes, so the listening approach shifts based on what’s buried. Georgia’s red clay dampens sound more than sandy soil, which is why deeper lines often need the tracing method or a correlator instead of listening alone. The tools adjust to the pipe and the ground above it, which is what makes professional leak detection work.
Got a Leak Under the Yard? Call Us.
Got a wet patch that won’t dry out, a water bill that jumped, or a driveway that’s cracking for no reason? Don’t dig yet. Call Georgia Water Leak Detection at (470) 454-5051, and we’ll find the leak and mark the exact spot before anyone touches a shovel.
Same-day dispatch is available, and we’re open seven days a week, evenings included. Or reach us through our contact page.
