Last reviewed and updated: 2026-09-28
East Park Community is a named residential community in the Marietta area. In neighborhoods built out in a single phase, the plumbing tends to be consistent from house to house, same era, same material, same installer, which makes diagnosis faster and means failures often arrive in clusters rather than one at a time.
The starting point is always the same: confirm the leak at the meter, establish whether it is inside the house or out in the buried service line, then locate it without opening anything.
HOA, shared walls and shared meters
In attached and managed housing, the first question is usually not where the leak is but whose it is.
In stacked or attached units, water appearing in a ceiling frequently originated in a different unit entirely, because it travels along joists and through penetrations before it shows. Moisture Moisture mapping across units, rather than guesswork, is what establishes where it actually started, and that is what settles the owner-versus-association question.
On a shared meter, nobody owns the leak: the community pays for water lost inside individual units and residents have no visibility of it. A proportion of units in any multi-unit property have a running toilet at any given moment, and in aggregate that is usually the largest single item. The account holder for a leak credit is the association, not the resident.
The water heater and the things around it
A surprising share of "mystery leaks" turn out to be the water heater or its fittings, and it is worth ruling out early because it is visible and accessible.
Check the drain pan underneath, the temperature and pressure relief valve and its discharge pipe, and the connections at the top of the tank. A relief valve that is weeping discharges continuously into the drain line, which is metered, invisible and easy to mistake for something far worse.
The heater is also the best place in the house to identify your pipe material, because the supply lines are exposed there. Gray flexible plastic stamped PB2110 is polybutylene; rigid dull-orange metal is copper; dull gray threaded metal is galvanized steel. Two minutes with a torch tells you more about your plumbing than anything else you can do.
If water is escaping right now
Order matters in the first ten minutes.
- Close the main water shut-off. Inside where the supply enters the house, or at the meter box near the curb. Clockwise to close.
- Cut power to the area at the breaker if water is anywhere near outlets or appliances. Do not stand in water to reach a panel.
- Open the lowest taps to drain the remaining pressure out of the system.
- Photograph everything before you touch it: standing water, damage, the meter reading. That evidence cannot be recreated later.
- Start drying. In Georgia humidity mold can begin establishing within roughly 24 to 48 hours.
Gas is different. If you smell rotten eggs, leave the building immediately, touch no electrical switch, and call 911 and your gas utility from outside.
Meter still moving with everything off?
That is water leaving the system somewhere. We locate it before anything is opened, anywhere in Marietta and Cobb County.
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.
Get the paperwork before the job closes. Once the slab is repoured and the trench backfilled, the evidence is gone and the application is much harder to support.
Which water utility bills you here
Most addresses outside the City of Marietta utility service area are billed by Cobb County Water System, which allows a partial leak credit once per rolling 12-month period across no more than two affected months, with proof of repair required. A Marietta mailing address does not by itself make you a city utility customer, the name printed on your bill is what settles it.
Local notes
In attached or managed housing, where the water appears is a poor guide to where it started. Establishing the actual source across a shared wall or between floors is what settles the question of whose repair it is, and that question is usually the expensive one.
Frequently asked questions
Do you cover East Park Community?
Yes. East Park Community is within our regular Marietta and Cobb County service area.
Which water utility serves this community?
Most addresses outside the City of Marietta utility area are billed by Cobb County Water System, which allows a partial leak credit once per rolling 12-month period across no more than two affected months. Confirm from the utility name on your bill.
What is the first thing I should do?
Run the water meter test. Turn everything off and watch the low-flow indicator, any movement confirms a leak. Closing the main house valve and re-checking then tells you whether it is inside the house or in the buried service line.