Tracking Down Leaks

 Over the past while, perhaps a few months, some of us have had this feeling that water use seemed to be unusually high.  As an example, in the past couple of weeks, we were running the lake pumps for 8 hours/night and only seeing an increase in reservoir level by 1 foot, about half what we would expect for that amount of pumping time.  Discussion between a few society members focused around where such a leak could possibly be.

The first problem in tracking down such a leak is that you'd expect to see some water lying around.  We're talking about a possible couple thousand gallons of water every day.  We looked around and saw nothing.  Meter readings at the end of March showed that water use at every residence was completely normal, so we abandoned the idea that someone was running a water slide/water park in their back yards.

Finally, we decided to start isolating parts of the subdivision and started with the lower west side of the system, turning the water off for most of one afternoon and running the lake pumps to see if a normal rise in reservoir level was restored.

With some relief, that is exactly what we saw happening.  So, where was that leak?  We happened to notice some water in a standpipe access pipe and then saw that the ground around one shutoff valve was a bit damp.  A few passes with a shovel revealed very saturated soil and when one property's water was turned off, the leak stopped.

We had an excavator in the next morning and the leak, tracked down to a small crack in a brass fitting, was repaired.  A good example of a $2 part in a $100 hole.

Thanks to Bill J and Dave for taking part of their day to fix the leak and the sleuthing that discovered the source.  With any luck, we should be back to running the lake pumps for 3 or 4 hours each night.