Leak Detection in Fraiser / Frasier Park

Last reviewed and updated: 2026-09-28

Fraiser / Frasier Park is a Marietta neighborhood that appears on maps as Fraiser and in the city's own list as Frasier Park. 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.

Start at the water meter

Before anything else, confirm the leak exists. Turn off every tap, appliance, icemaker and irrigation zone, then find your meter, usually in a covered box near the curb, and watch the low-flow indicator. It is a small triangle, star or dial designed to turn at very low flow rates. If it moves while nothing is running, water is escaping somewhere on your side of the meter.

1. Record the full reading and leave the property untouched for one to two hours.
2. Read it again. Any change confirms a leak, even if the indicator was moving too slowly to see.
3. Close the main house shut-off and re-check. Still moving means the leak is in the buried service line between the meter and the house. Stopped means it is inside or under the house.
4. Isolate irrigation separately if you have sprinklers, since they usually tee off before the house valves.

That single test costs nothing and narrows the problem more than anything else you can do yourself.

Rental and investment property

On a tenanted property the gap between a leak starting and anyone reporting it is usually longer, which means more accumulated damage and a much larger bill by the time anybody looks.

The practical answer is to watch the bill rather than wait for a report. A sustained rise with no change in occupancy is normally the first evidence of a leak, and it shows up well before a tenant notices anything visible. Where the tenant holds the water account, ask them to flag any unexplained increase.

It also pays to know which utility serves the property and to keep every repair invoice, because the leak credit application is made by whoever holds the account and it requires proof the problem was corrected.

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.

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.

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

You will see this neighborhood written both ways: Fraiser on some maps, Frasier Park in the city's list. They refer to the same area, so it is worth searching both spellings when you are looking for anything local, from utility notices to contractor coverage.

Frequently asked questions