A bill two or three times its usual size is a measurement, not a mystery. Before you call anyone, you can find out in about two hours whether water is moving through your meter when nothing in the house is running, and roughly where it is going. That answer changes who you call, what you pay, and whether your city will credit any of it back.
Turn off everything that uses water, wait two hours without touching a tap, and read the meter at the start and the end. If the number moved, water is leaving your system somewhere.
EPA’s WaterSense program puts it in one sentence: “Check your water meter before and after a two-hour period when no water is being used. If the meter changes at all, you probably have a leak.”
Most Texas meters give you a faster version of the same test. El Paso Water describes the part to watch: “The small red triangular dial near the center of the register is a flow or leak indicator, and it will turn counterclockwise when even the slightest amount of water flows through.” With every fixture off, that dial should be still. If it is turning, something is drawing water.
El Paso Water’s own instructions for the test are short: “Make sure water is not being used inside or outside of your house.” Then “find your water meter and check the triangular dial to see if it’s moving.” If your meter has no such dial, the utility gives the slower alternative: “wait a couple of hours and see if the meter reading has changed.”
Austin Water customers have a third route. The city’s page tells residents to “start by checking your water meter and utility bill for signs of unusual use,” and points to the My ATX Water portal for “continuous usage alerts that could point to a leak.” An alert that fires at three in the morning is a leak, because nothing else in a sleeping house runs continuously.
Shut the main valve at the house and read the meter again. Still moving means the water is escaping between the meter and the house. Stopped means it is inside.
This is the single most useful thing you can do before you call, and El Paso Water publishes the sequence: “Make sure all water using appliances and fixtures are turned off,” then “find your home’s main shut-off valve and shut off the water,” then “check the meter again to see if there’s any movement.” No movement puts the leak inside the house. Continued movement puts it in the buried line between the meter and the building.
The distinction matters because it decides the trade. An inside leak is usually a fixture, and most of the time it is a toilet. A leak in the buried line is a dig or a reroute, and it is the job electronic leak detection exists for.
Put dye in the tank, do not flush, and come back. Color in the bowl means the flapper is passing water continuously.
Three of our sources describe this test and give three different waiting times, so here is each one as it is written.
EPA WaterSense: “Identify toilet leaks by placing a few drops of food coloring in the toilet tank. If any color shows up in the bowl after 10 minutes, you have a leak.”
Austin Water: “If color appears in the bowl within 30 minutes without flushing, you have a leak.”
El Paso Water: “Add a few drops of food coloring to the back of the toilet tank (not the bowl),” then “wait about 30 minutes to see if any color comes through to the bowl.”
None of the three explains why the intervals differ. Wait the longest of the three rather than the shortest.
A running toilet is unglamorous and expensive. EPA’s national figures give the scale of ordinary household leaks: “The average household’s leaks can account for more than 9,300 gallons of water wasted every year,” and “nine percent of homes have leaks that waste 50 gallons or more per day.” Two smaller ones are worth knowing because they are so easy to dismiss. “A leaky faucet that drips at the rate of one drip per second can waste more than 3,000 gallons per year,” and “a showerhead leaking at 10 drips per minute wastes more than 500 gallons per year.”
EPA also gives the money side, though not in dollars: “Fixing easily corrected household water leaks can save homeowners about 10 percent on their water bills.”
Two large Texas utilities publish the same boundary: they maintain the line up to the meter, and everything from the meter to the house is yours.
Austin Water: “Austin Water is responsible for maintaining and repairing water mains throughout our service area. Property owners are responsible for service lines past the meter and for internal plumbing issues.” The city adds that on the private side of the meter, “you are responsible for maintaining the service line and cut-off valve on the private side of the meter.”
SAWS: “SAWS is responsible for maintaining the water line from the main to the water meter. You are responsible for repairs to any part of the water system from the meter toward your home or business.”
Both were read on 25 September 2026. We are not going to tell you this is the rule in every Texas city, because we have only read it in two. Look for the same sentence on your own utility’s site before you assume it.
That boundary is why the meter test is worth two hours. A leak on the utility’s side is the utility’s to fix. A leak on yours is a plumbing job, and the buried line out to the meter is plumbing under Texas law in exactly the way the pipe under your sink is. We set out what that means for permits, and who may lawfully do the work.
Call leak detection when you know water is leaving the system and you cannot see where.
The meter tells you there is a leak and which side of the house it is on. It cannot tell you whether the water is under the slab, in a wall, in the yard line, or in an irrigation zone. Electronic and acoustic leak detection exists to answer that last question without opening the whole run.
If the water is under a slab, that is its own job with its own decisions, and slab leaks have their own page rather than this one. If your pressure is high, that is a cause worth ruling out, and the pressure-reducing valve is covered here.
We do not publish a price for leak detection. No city, utility or state agency read for this page publishes one, and we would rather say that than repeat a range somebody made up.
Some Texas cities will recalculate the water you lost, but the rules differ city by city and only one of the four we read publishes its terms in full.
Dallas is the one that publishes. Dallas Water Utilities grants an adjustment where “a water leak has caused a substantial increase in water consumption,” and its terms are specific: “only one adjustment per a twelve (12) month period,” “limited to a maximum of three (3) months,” with the excess water “charged at the lowest rate of the rate scale.” You must submit “within ninety (90) days of repair date,” and you must provide “the repair receipt or paid in full invoice.” Those terms are printed on the city’s affidavit form, DWU-FRM-004-RB, revision 5, effective 25 October 2023.
Two things about the Dallas process are worth carrying into any city’s. Repairs must be finished first: “Repairs must be complete for consideration of a leak adjustment.” And an application is not an outcome. Dallas says so twice, once on the web page (“The submission of a request does not guarantee an adjustment”) and once on the form (“Filing a request does not guarantee a leak adjustment”). The city also tells you to keep paying in the meantime: “Please continue to pay your water bill by the due date.”
Dallas publishes two different review times and we cannot reconcile them. The web page says to allow “up to 60 days for this process to be completed, depending on the repair date.” The form says the review “may take up to (45) forty-five days.” Both documents are current and both come from the same department. Ask which one governs when you file.
The other three are thinner. SAWS says only that “if you submit repair receipts, we can review your account for a possible adjustment,” and states no frequency limit, no cap and no deadline on the page we read. Austin Water says “if a leak resulted in a higher bill than usual, you may be eligible for a water leak bill adjustment,” and likewise publishes no conditions there. Houston Public Works points customers at a Universal Adjustment Form, described on its page as a way to “apply for credits related to unusually high bills, leaks, or exceptional circumstances.”
The practical lesson is the same in all four: keep the invoice. Every adjustment process we could read turns on a paid repair receipt, and a plumber’s invoice that names the repair and the date is the document your city will ask for.
A high bill in San Antonio may be a drought surcharge rather than a leak.
SAWS charges single-family residential accounts “$10.37 per thousand gallons” for usage above 20,000 gallons in a billing period under Stage 3 restrictions, read from the utility’s page on 25 September 2026. Drought stages move during a year, so check which stage is in force before you conclude the meter is the problem.
SAWS names the two candidates plainly: “there is either high outdoor water use or a leak.” The two-hour meter test is how you tell them apart, and it costs nothing.
Every figure on this page comes from one of the documents below, each published by the body that sets, measures or administers the thing it describes. We record the document’s own date and the date we read it, because published pages change without notice.
| Source | Document date | We read it |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, WaterSense — Fix a Leak Week | page footer reads Last updated on March 13, 2026 | 2026-09-25 |
| El Paso Water — Finding Leaks | undated utility page; no revision stamp anywhere on it | 2026-09-25 |
| El Paso Water — Your Water Meter | undated utility page | 2026-09-25 |
| Austin Water — Water Leaks | undated city page; no revision stamp | 2026-09-25 |
| San Antonio Water System — How to Find the Leak’s Source | page metadata reads modified 2026-01-07; no revision date in the visible content | 2026-09-25 |
| San Antonio Water System — Don’t Get Soaked By a High Bill | page metadata reads modified 2026-05-12 | 2026-09-25 |
| Dallas Water Utilities — Request a Leak Adjustment | undated city page; carries no revision number | 2026-09-25 |
| Dallas Water Utilities — Leak Adjustment Request (affidavit form) | printed on the form as Document Number DWU-FRM-004-RB, Revision 5, Effective Date 10/25/2023 | 2026-09-25 |
| City of Houston Public Works — Customer Account Services (Universal Adjustment Form) | undated city page | 2026-09-25 |
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