Got a letter from water dept that I was using 1300 gal a day and there might be something wrong. Amazingly the city has a site that shows my daily use graphically.
About August 25th it shot up to over 5000 gal a day and then, almost monotonically, it decreased day by day for a month to about 500 gal a day then dropped back to normal. It has stayed that way for three weeks.
Only evidence of leaked water is a patch of very damp very soft earth at a spot in the backyard close to the house. Single story built 1950s on a slab with 2016 addition. No pool. Copper pipes in attic so some repiping has been done.
Using a pressure meter I can see that the house does not hold pressure for even 5 seconds.
So if it doesn’t hold pressure why isn’t it currently leaking and how does a huge leak fix itself at all, let alone gradually?
Three plumbers have looked at it. One says they listened to water flows and narrowed down the bad segment (to a location in the addition). Another with the same equipment doesn’t hear anything. One says repiping is needed one says it’s been repiped. Moved here 6 years ago.
One plumper dug down two feet at the damp spot to see if water would run in from somewhere but just found more damp earth. Said that indicated leak was not immediately adjacent. Another plumber said water finds its way by the path of least resistance and the leak could be fairly distant.
The meter at the street moves very slowly with nothing running.
