Every month we get the same call: "My bill doubled and nothing changed." Nine times out of ten, something did change — a leak started, quietly, somewhere you cannot see it. Water escaping at even a slow trickle runs 24 hours a day, and the meter counts every drop.
The 15-minute meter test
Before you call anyone, run this simple check:
- Close every tap in the house and make sure the washing machine, dishwasher and any filter system are idle.
- Find your meter — usually on the boundary wall — and photograph the reading, including the small red dial.
- Wait 15 minutes without using any water.
- Photograph it again. If the red dial has moved, water is leaving your system somewhere.
If you have a storage tank, do the test twice: once with the tank's stop valve open, once closed. That tells you whether the leak sits before or after the tank — which halves the search area immediately.
The four usual suspects
1. The toilet that never stops
A worn flush valve lets water seep from the cistern into the bowl continuously. It is silent and nearly invisible. Drop a little food colouring into the cistern; if the bowl shows colour within 20 minutes without flushing, you have found your leak. This one fault can add hundreds of litres a day.
2. The pipe inside the wall
Malaysian homes often run pipes through concrete walls and floors. A pinhole in a hot water line or a cracked joint shows up as a warm patch, bubbling paint or a musty smell before you ever see water. These need moisture-meter tracing — opening walls on guesswork gets expensive fast.
3. The underground feed
The run between the meter and the house is under your garden or driveway. Look for a patch of grass greener than the rest, moss on the driveway edge, or soil that stays damp in dry weather.
4. The overflowing roof tank
A stuck float valve makes the tank overflow into the gutter — sometimes for months. If you hear water trickling on the roof on a dry day, that is not birds.
What it costs to ignore
Beyond the bill, a slow leak saturates plaster and timber, feeds mould, and can corrode nearby electrical conduit — which is how a plumbing fault becomes an electrical one. The repair cost rises with every month the leak runs.
When to call us
If the meter test shows movement and the toilet dye test comes back clean, the leak is likely hidden — that is exactly what our leak tracing service is for. We locate it with instruments, show you the evidence, and quote the fix before we open anything.