Last reviewed and updated: 2026-09-28
Queensborough Square 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.
When the stain is nowhere near the leak
Water follows the path of least resistance. It runs along the top of a joist, down the outside of a pipe, across a header and out through a light fitting, so the wet patch on your ceiling is rarely below the thing that is actually leaking.
That is why opening the wall under the stain is a coin toss, and why concealed leaks are mapped before anything is opened. Moisture meters read through finished surfaces to show how far the water has spread and which direction it traveled. Thermal imaging picks up the temperature difference a wet cavity or a hot water line creates. Acoustic equipment pinpoints the escape point.
Timing narrows it further: a leak that runs constantly is a pressurized supply line, while one that only appears after a shower or a washing-machine cycle is a drain.
What your insurance will and will not pay for
Georgia homeowners policies generally pay for leak detection only as part of a covered loss, not as a standalone inspection.
Where a leak has caused damage your policy covers, insurers commonly pay to locate the leak, gain access to the pipe, and restore what had to be opened. What a policy does and does not cover is set out on the homeowners insurance page, a public adjuster described typical handling as covering "leak detection, access to the pipe, treating the soil, and pouring new concrete into the void." The pipe repair itself is frequently treated as maintenance and excluded.
The two exclusions that defeat most claims are earth movement and gradual deterioration or wear and tear. A slow pinhole that ran for months is easy to characterize as gradual, which is why documenting when symptoms first appeared matters so much. Read your own policy, and speak to your carrier before work begins.
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.
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The seasonal pattern in your bill
Twelve months of water bills is one of the most useful diagnostic documents you can bring to a conversation about a leak, and almost nobody thinks to look at it.
A bill that climbs every spring and settles every autumn points at irrigation, either a genuine leak in the system or a controller running longer than anyone realizes. A bill that steps up once and then stays high points at a continuous failure: a service line, a slab leak, or a toilet that never stops filling. A bill that spikes for a single month and returns to normal is usually a one-off, such as filling a pool or pressure washing.
Most utility portals show a year of usage history as a chart. Look at the shape before you assume anything: it frequently identifies the culprit before anyone opens a toolbox.
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 housing, a leak that only appears after somebody showers is a drain line, and a leak that runs constantly is a pressurized supply line. Noting which one you have before you call genuinely shortens the visit, because it decides which equipment comes out of the van first.
Frequently asked questions
Do you cover Queensborough Square?
Yes. Queensborough Square 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.