Leak Detection in McLaren Gates

Last reviewed and updated: 2026-09-28

McLaren Gates 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.

Slab, crawlspace or basement: it changes everything

The foundation under your house decides how long a leak can hide. It is the most useful thing to know before anyone comes out.

Slab on grade. Supply lines run through or under the concrete. A leak there can run for months producing nothing but a climbing water bill, until a warm patch, cracked tile or damp carpet finally appears. These are slab leaks, located acoustically, through the concrete.

Crawlspace. The pipe is accessible, so a leak usually shows within days, but that same exposure makes the pipe vulnerable to freezing after a hard Marietta winter.

Basement. Water shows quickly, but in a finished basement it has already traveled along joists before appearing, so the ceiling stain is rarely below the actual leak.

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.

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.

Supply leak or drain leak: the timing test

One observation you can make yourself narrows the problem in half, and it costs nothing.

A supply line is pressurized all the time, so a supply leak runs constantly, day and night, whether anyone is home or not. A drain line only carries water while something is draining, so a drain leak appears in the minutes after a shower, a bath, a dishwasher or a washing-machine cycle, and then stops.

That distinction decides which equipment is used. Pressurized leaks are found acoustically, by listening for the hiss of escaping water through concrete or soil. Drain leaks make almost no sound at all, so they are diagnosed with a camera inspection, smoke testing or a hydrostatic test instead. Tell us which pattern you are seeing and the visit gets considerably shorter.

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 a managed community it is worth knowing, before anything goes wrong, what your association's documents say about plumbing inside the unit versus in common walls. That answer determines who instructs the repair, and it is much easier to establish on a quiet afternoon than during a leak.

Frequently asked questions