The simple locate: $200–$400
Short accessible runs: confirmed, pinpointed, marked without ceremony.
Precision Leak Location
Concealed Leaks
Pinpointed In
Double Bay
The water bill knows something you don’t. Somewhere under a slab or behind a wall in Double Bay, a pipe is quietly feeding the ground, and finding it with instruments instead of a jackhammer is the difference between lifting three tiles and gutting a bathroom. We locate to centimetres, then repair through one deliberate hole.
- Licence 368473C, fully insured
- Acoustic, thermal & pressure instruments
- Found and fixed by the same crew
How A Hidden Leak Gives Itself Up In Double Bay
A hidden leak cannot help giving itself away three times over. Escaping water under pressure sings at frequencies acoustic gear can chase along a pipe run; it changes the temperature of whatever it soaks, which thermal imaging paints in false colour through wall sheeting and slab surfaces; and it bleeds pressure from whichever isolated section of pipework it lives on, which a gauge catches cold. One signal suggests; three signals triangulate.
That triangulation is what you are actually buying. Where the readings converge, we mark the floor, and in Double Bay’s renovated homes, where pipework wanders in ways no council plan ever recorded, that mark routinely sits metres from where anyone would have started digging on instinct. The difference between those two points is the difference between lifting three tiles and re-doing a bathroom.
Salt, damp and the fittings that go first
Corrosion works faster in humid, salt-carrying air, and the parts that fail earliest are the small ones: tap bodies, external fittings, and the connections around a hot water unit.
Double Bay’s many cafés and restaurants send fats and oils into the sewer, where they set hard. We clear grease-choked lines and keep them flowing.
Many of the leaks we find on properties near the water are not in the pipework at all but at a fitting that has been quietly corroding in plain sight. They are also the cheapest to put right, if found before they let go.
Whose leak is it in an apartment?
Many blocks of flats and mixed-use buildings share drainage, so one blockage affects several units. A camera pinpoints the problem.
The technical question and the financial question have different answers, and both need settling. Pipework serving only your lot is yours; risers, mains and common-property lines belong to the owners corporation.
A leak detection report that names the line, the lot and the direction of travel is what turns a dispute into a decision. That is what we write, because a description of where the water appeared settles nothing.
Pressure at the bottom of the hill
Mains pressure rises as elevation falls, and properties low on a slope routinely sit at the top of the acceptable range. Sustained high pressure is a genuine cause of leaks rather than merely a contributor.
Streets sloping down to the bay move stormwater fast, and blocked pits back up in heavy rain. We clear them quickly to stop flooding.
If your property is low-lying relative to the surrounding streets and you have had more than one fitting fail, a pressure test costs very little and a limiting valve costs little more. It is the cheapest leak prevention available.
When a drain leak undermines itself
A cracked earthenware line leaking into its own trench washes out the bedding supporting it. Losing support, the pipe sags; sagging, it holds water; holding water, it collects solids and eventually blocks.
Older homes and buildings still run on original clay and earthenware drains prone to cracks and sags. CCTV shows us exactly what’s going on.
Which is why a drain that has begun to block regularly and a drain that is leaking are frequently the same drain at different stages. Finding it early is considerably cheaper than finding it once it has collapsed.
Water coming through the ceiling
The apartment showing the damage is almost never the apartment with the fault. Water tracks along the top of a slab, through penetrations and down whichever path is available, which can be several metres laterally before it enters your ceiling.
Thermal imaging and moisture mapping from below will usually establish the direction it is arriving from, which narrows the source before anyone needs access to a neighbour's bathroom.
What it costs in Double Bay
The standard job, $300–$500
First hour with the full kit, pressure isolation, thermal, acoustic, on a typical concealed leak.
The long trace, $100–$250/hr after
Extended runs, awkward access and multi-leak eliminations, beyond hour one.
The hard cases, up to ~$900
Deep slab lines and multi-storey tracing at the top of the Sydney range.
Then the fix, priced on proof
Quoted off exactly what detection found, repaired through the marked spot, same crew, same visit, one call-out.
Compare it with exploratory demolition, which costs more than detection before it has even guessed right once. Figures here are indicative of the 2026 Sydney market rather than a quote from us, you get your own number as a fixed price before any work starts.
How The Hunt Runs
Step 01
Step 01
Confirm Before Chasing
The meter test done properly, plus your bills. If the evidence says there is no supply leak to find, you hear exactly that, free of a detection invoice.
Step 02
Corner It
Isolating pipework section by section against a pressure gauge, hot versus cold, line by line, convicts one run and acquits the rest.
Step 03
Mark The Spot
Acoustic tracking and thermal imaging walk the guilty run until the signals stack. The X on the floor is accurate to centimetres.
Step 04
One Hole, One Fix
Access opens exactly at the mark; the failed section is repaired and pressure-tested. If the run's condition argues for a reroute instead, both numbers land first.
Meter Creeping With Everything Off?
Then the leak is real and already on the clock. Book the detection before it surfaces somewhere expensive.
A standard detection visit generally runs $350-$650 depending on the size of the property and how much isolating is involved. Tracer gas or extensive thermal work sits above that. Market figures for 2026, not a quote, and if the meter test says there is no leak, you are told that rather than sold the rest of the process.
Because excavation is where the money goes, and water rarely surfaces where it escapes. The plumbing repair on a typical service leak is minor; getting to it is most of the cost, and getting to the wrong place is all of the cost with none of the benefit.
Very possibly, and it is worth ruling out first. A cistern leaking internally wastes thousands of litres a quarter silently. Put a few drops of food colouring in the cistern, wait twenty minutes without flushing, then look in the pan. Colour in the bowl means the outlet valve is passing, usually a cheap part.
Close to the water the ground is often wet regardless of any fault, which removes the most obvious diagnostic. So detection here leans on isolation and the meter rather than observation, and on tracer gas where a leak is genuinely masked by ambient groundwater.
Very commonly. Failed waterproofing in a shower recess is the single most frequent source of inter-lot water damage in strata, and it presents as a damp ceiling patch months after the membrane gave up. Flood testing the recess is inexpensive and definitive, and it is a building repair, not a plumbing one.
Yes, even if the volume looks small. Saturated backfill is what makes retaining walls move, and the plumbing repair is minor compared with what rebuilding a wall costs.
Yes, and it is easy to miss. A cracked drain leaks into the ground continuously without affecting the meter, without a pressure drop, and often with no symptom inside the house. It is found with a camera rather than acoustics, a different method from a pressure leak.
Pinpoint The Leak This Week In Double Bay
Instruments, a mark on the floor, one hole, one fix: and the meter finally standing still.
