Leak Detection in Barrett Green

Last reviewed and updated: 2026-09-28

Barrett Green is a Marietta residential neighborhood. In this part of the city the plumbing question is usually about age rather than anything exotic: what material was standard when the house was built, how many times it has been repaired since, and whether the water utility is the city or the county.

The practical starting point is the same everywhere: confirm the leak exists at the meter, then narrow it to inside or outside the house before anyone opens anything.

A bill that jumped, with nothing visible

The most common call is not a flood. It is a water bill that doubled with no change in habits and nothing wrong that anyone can see.

The usual causes, cheapest first: a toilet flapper that no longer seals, an irrigation valve that will not close fully, a buried service line leak draining into the soil, and a supply line failing under a slab. The full order of checks is on the high water bill page. A Cobb County household reported 89,000 gallons producing a bill of roughly $1,400. That volume does not come from a drip. It comes from something running continuously for weeks.

Rule out the toilets first. Food coloring in each tank, twenty minutes without flushing, then look in the bowl. Color in the bowl means that flapper is leaking, and it is a few dollars to fix.

What you can safely check yourself

There is a short list of things worth doing before calling anyone, and a shorter list of things not worth attempting.

Worth doing: the meter test; the toilet dye test with food coloring; checking the water heater pan and relief valve; isolating irrigation and re-testing the meter; walking the lot for a soggy or unusually green patch; and reading static pressure with a cheap gauge on an outside tap.

Not worth doing: opening a wall or floor under a stain to look. Water travels along framing before it appears, so the visible damp is a poor guide to the source, and exploratory openings usually miss, leaving you to pay for drywall repair somewhere that was never the problem.

Claiming the leak credit afterwards

Once the leak is repaired, your water utility may credit part of the inflated bill, but only if you can prove what was wrong and what was done about it.

Cobb County Water System allows a partial credit once in a rolling 12-month period, applied to no more than two affected months. The county describes it as "a partial offset of the costs associated with certain plumbing failures, not to fully compensate a customer for the costs of a leak." You need your account address and number, a brief explanation of the leak, and a plumbing repair receipt, a receipt for parts, or at minimum a letter explaining what was done. Pool leaks also require the pool volume, and you keep paying the bill while the claim is processed.

Marietta Power & Water runs its own separate process for City of Marietta customers. Check the utility name on your bill to see which applies to you.

Pools, irrigation and everything outside the house

Not every leak is indoors, and the outdoor ones are the easiest to miss because they produce no symptom you can see or hear.

Irrigation runs underground, on a timer, usually overnight. A cracked lateral or a valve that will not seat fully wastes thousands of gallons before anything surfaces. Close the irrigation supply and re-check the meter, if it stops, the system is your answer.

Pools lose water to evaporation, so the question is always whether the loss is normal. Roughly a quarter to half an inch a day in a Georgia summer is expected. The bucket test settles it, and whether the loss changes with the pump running tells you which side of the plumbing is at fault. An automatic fill valve will mask the whole thing, which is why pool leak detection begins with the bucket test, the level stays perfect while the bill climbs.

The buried service line from the meter to the house is yours, not the utility's. Watch for a strip of lawn that stays soggy or grows greener than everything around it.

Which water utility bills you here

Billing is mixed across this part of Marietta. Some addresses fall inside the City of Marietta utility service area and are billed by Marietta Power & Water; others are served by Cobb County Water System. They run separate leak credit processes with separate paperwork, so check the utility name printed on your bill before applying for a credit.

Local notes

Where lots carry established landscaping and irrigation, the sprinkler system is worth ruling out before anything else. It runs underground, overnight, on a timer, and it is the single most commonly missed cause of a water bill that rises every spring.

Frequently asked questions