How do you find a leak you can’t see?
Start at the meter. Turn off every faucet and appliance in the house and look at the meter’s leak indicator, the small dial or triangle that spins with any flow. If it moves with everything off, water is leaving the system somewhere. Close the main shutoff at the house and look again: if it still moves, the leak is in the line between the meter and the house; if it stops, the leak is inside.
That buried line is the owner’s to repair, since Metro Water Services owns only the stretch from the main to the meter. Inside, the clues are a warm spot on a slab floor, a stain on the ceiling under a bathroom, a patch of yard that never dries, or a bill that jumped.
Why is the water pressure low?
If it’s one faucet, look at the aerator or the cartridge, often choked with scale. If it’s the whole house, check that the main shutoff is fully open, then the pressure-reducing valve if the house has one, then the pipe itself. Galvanized steel corrodes from the inside and slowly closes up, and Metro Water’s December 2025 letters went in part to customers whose service lines are galvanized and need replacing.
What should you do when a pipe freezes or bursts?
Shut the water off at the main, then open a faucet to drain what’s left in the lines. Knowing where that valve is before you need it is on Metro Water’s own cold-weather list, along with insulating exposed pipes, letting faucets drip and keeping the heat at 55°F or higher. When the cold comes in hard, the city’s pipes suffer too: eleven water mains broke in Nashville on January 20, 2024.
Burst pipes usually split in an outside wall, a crawlspace or an attic. The repair is cutting out the damaged section, joining in new pipe and testing it under pressure, then closing the wall. Here the drywall and paint are part of the same job.
Shut-off valves and water lines
Old gate valves seize half open and drip from the stem the one time you turn them. Quarter-turn ball valves at the main and under each fixture are a small job that pays off the first time something leaks. Water lines in older houses may be galvanized, copper or polybutylene; we repair what’s there or repipe in PEX when the old line isn’t worth saving.
Price depends on how hard the leak is to find, where it sits (yard, slab, wall or ceiling), the pipe material, how much needs replacing, and the patching afterward, each a line on the itemized estimate.