Licensed plumbers, written pricing, serving Yonkers
A climbing water bill with no change in use, the sound of water running behind a wall when every tap is off, a warm patch on the floor: these are the ways a hidden leak announces itself. Action Construction locates and repairs concealed water leaks for Yonkers, NY homes and businesses, finding them behind walls, under slabs, beneath fixtures, and in buried service lines, then making the repair with the least demolition possible. Our work is the water side of the system. If you smell gas, leave the building and call your gas utility or 911 first.
Leak detection deals with the pressurized supply lines and the drain and waste lines that carry water through and out of the building. A suspected gas leak is a different problem and a life safety one, so that call goes to your gas utility emergency line, not a scheduled plumbing visit. On the water side, a hidden leak wastes water around the clock and does slow structural damage long before it shows itself as a stain or a puddle, which is why finding it early is worth a service call rather than waiting for it to declare itself.
The two questions a leak location visit answers are where the water is escaping and what it will take to reach it. Those drive everything after: the size of the repair, whether any finished surface has to come out, and whether the run that failed is a one time fault or a sign the whole branch is near the end of its life.
Hidden leaks tend to show up indirectly. Watch for a water bill that climbs with no change in use, the sound of running water when every fixture is off, warm or damp spots underfoot, staining that spreads on a ceiling or a wall, a musty smell in a closet or a finished basement, pressure that has dropped at the fixtures, tile or flooring that has begun to lift, or a foundation crack that stays wet. Any one of these is worth a professional leak location before the damage compounds.
The simplest first check you can run yourself is the meter test. With every fixture and appliance off, note the meter reading, wait fifteen to thirty minutes, and read it again. If the dial has moved or the low flow indicator is turning, water is leaving the system. If the meter still moves with the main house valve closed, the leak is on the service line between the meter and the street.
Once the source is confirmed we give you a written price for the repair before anything is opened up. Because we are also a general contractor, we can open the wall or slab, make the repair, and close and finish the surface on the same job rather than line up a separate contractor for the patch and paint.
Two patterns show up over and over in Yonkers. Prewar buildings with original galvanized or brass supply lines develop pinhole leaks inside finished walls as the pipe corrodes from the inside out. Those leaks often track along the outside of the pipe before they surface, so the stain on the ceiling is frequently several feet from the actual hole, which is exactly the case where guessing and cutting wastes money. When one pinhole opens on a galvanized branch, more are usually close behind, so the honest conversation is often about repiping that run in copper or PEX rather than chasing individual holes down the pipe.
The other common one is a buried service line leak between the curb and an older house, where the line is 50 years old or more and may be galvanized or, on the oldest properties, lead. These run for weeks under a lawn, a walk, or a driveway before anyone notices, sometimes showing only as a soft spot, a patch of grass that is greener or grows faster, or water weeping up through a driveway seam. If the leak has already caused an active flood, that is an emergency plumbing repair. If the source turns out to be a corroded water heater rather than a pipe, see water heater repair. A buried leak on the sewer side rather than the supply side is covered under sewer line repair and replacement, and the full service list is on our Yonkers plumbing services hub.
A single accessible copper section behind an unfinished basement ceiling is a modest repair. A slab leak, a leak behind tile, or a run of failed galvanized inside finished walls is larger, and on galvanized it often points toward repiping that branch rather than a spot fix that just moves the problem a few feet down the pipe.
Start with the water meter. Turn off every fixture and appliance and watch the meter for fifteen to thirty minutes. If it moves, water is escaping somewhere in the system. From there, a professional leak location uses acoustic equipment and pressure testing to place the leak before anything is opened, which is the step that keeps the repair small.
In most of Yonkers, the property owner owns the service line from the curb stop or the property line to the building, and the water utility owns the main in the street. A leak between the meter and the fixtures inside is always the owner’s. We document exactly where the leak sits relative to the property line so responsibility is clear if there is any question.
Yes. Acoustic sensors, a correlator, thermal imaging, and pressure testing can pinpoint a leak inside a wall or a slab to within a small area, so the repair opens only the section over the leak instead of a whole wall. On hot water lines a thermal camera often shows the track before any tool touches the wall.
No. A suspected gas leak is an emergency. Leave the building, avoid switches and open flames, and call your gas utility emergency line or 911. We handle water leak detection and repair, and we can work on the plumbing side of an appliance once the utility has cleared the gas.
That is the classic signature of a buried service line leak or a slab leak, both of which can run a long time before surfacing. Book a leak location visit. Finding and fixing it early is far cheaper than the foundation, landscaping, or mold work that a long running hidden leak eventually causes, and the utility will not credit water that ran onto the ground.
Licensed & Insured | Residential & Commercial | Serving CT & NY