Last reviewed and updated: 2026-09-28
South 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.
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.
Document it before anything is closed up
This is the step most people skip, and it costs them twice.
Your water utility will not apply a leak credit without evidence the problem was corrected, Cobb County accepts a repair receipt, a parts receipt, or at minimum a letter explaining what was done. Your insurer works from the probable cause and from whether the failure looks sudden or gradual, because gradual deterioration is one of the exclusions that defeats most claims.
All of that is easy to capture while the repair is open and effectively impossible once the slab is repoured and the wall is patched. Ask for photographs before opening, with the failed pipe exposed, and after the repair; a written statement of what failed and why; and the itemized invoice, emailed rather than handed over as a paper slip.
Freeze damage and winter failures
A hard Marietta freeze reliably produces a run of burst-pipe calls, and the pattern is consistent.
The vulnerable runs are the ones in unconditioned space: crawlspaces, garages, exterior walls, attics and outdoor hose bibs. Water expands as it freezes, splits the pipe, and then does nothing at all until the thaw, which is when the damage actually appears, often while nobody is home. Water actively escaping is an emergency: close the main shut-off first.
Before winter, insulate exposed runs, seal crawlspace vents, disconnect hose pipes and know where your main shut-off valve is and that it actually turns. During a hard freeze, let a tap drip and open cabinet doors under sinks on exterior walls.
Worth knowing: Cobb County explicitly excludes faucets left dripping during freezing weather from its leak credit, the county treats that roughly 50 gallons as normal use, not a leak.
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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.
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
Water travels along framing before it shows, so the stain on a ceiling or the damp patch on a wall is rarely below the leak itself. Photographing it before anything is cleaned or moved is worth doing: that documentation supports both a utility credit and an insurance claim later.
Frequently asked questions
Do you cover South Square?
Yes. South 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.