Is the wet spot where the pipe is broken?

Not necessarily. Water follows pipe trenches and softer soil, so it can surface some distance from the break. Mark the wet area, note which station ran last, and trace along the line using the zone map and the behaviour of the heads before digging. Careless digging risks other buried utilities.

Irrigation Leak Detection

Narrow a hidden irrigation leak with the meter, the zone timing and the ground before anything is dug up.

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Use the meter and the timing first

Irrigation leaks hide well. Water can travel along a pipe trench and surface several feet from the break, and gravel or turf can hide a slow loss for months. Detection starts with two simple tests that need no digging. The first is the meter: with every indoor fixture off and the irrigation system idle, a moving meter means water is going somewhere. The second is timing: EPA WaterSense treats standing water that appears when no station is running as a possible sign of a buried leak, so a wet area is checked before, during and after each station runs.

Those two tests sort most cases. A leak on the mainline, upstream of the zone valves, loses water whenever the supply is on. A leak on a lateral, downstream of a valve, only shows while that station runs. A valve that does not close fully looks like a lateral leak that never stops.

Sun City adds a twist: duplexes, Garden Court apartments and the shared-wall patio homes across Del Webb Blvd put lines close to a neighbour's wall, and the museum history notes those patio homes have no association, so owners arrange access between themselves.

Then confirm the spot and repair it

Once the search is down to one line, the trace follows the pipe route using the zone map, wet soil, unusually green strips and the pressure behaviour of the heads on that line. A sudden loss of reach on several heads in one station is strong evidence of a break drawing water away. Only then is the excavation opened, at the smallest point that will expose the fault.

A finished leak repair is pressure tested with the trench still open, then backfilled and the meter checked again with the system idle. The report should say where the leak was, what failed and what was done, so the next high bill is not a mystery. Pipe repairs themselves are described under PVC pipe and mainline repair, and a leaking zone valve under valve and solenoid repair.

Source: US EPA WaterSense, Sprinkler Spruce-Up, Checked Oct 1, 2026