Found with equipment rather than guesswork, and repaired properly. On streets built in the same few years, one pinhole is worth understanding rather than just patching.
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A pinhole is a small perforation that seeps rather than bursts. It is undramatic, it is usually found by the damage it has already done, and on its own it is simply a repair.
What makes it worth a second thought here is the housing. The orchards were subdivided from the late 1940s and street after street went up inside a few years, so the original copper in a great many of these houses is a similar age and was installed to the same standards by similar hands.
A pinhole is an end-of-life failure mode rather than an accident. Nothing was hit, nothing was overloaded; the material reached the point where it could no longer hold, in the weakest available spot.
So one is a repair and worth treating as one. Two, in different places, inside a year or so, is the installation telling you something, and the sensible response is to find out what condition the rest of it is in rather than to keep patching and hoping.
Under the sink, behind the toilet, or the main at the meter. Every minute the water is off is damage that does not happen.
Everything off, nothing refilling, read it, wait an hour, read it again. A change with nothing running means water is genuinely leaving the property.
Close the machine and the dishwasher too, and turn any irrigation controller off entirely rather than to a rest day.
The short version is the smallest dial over two minutes. The hour version is more reliable and it is worth doing if the two-minute result is ambiguous.
If the meter stops moving, the loss is on the hot side, which means the unit itself or the hot distribution beyond it. If it keeps moving, the loss is on the cold side.
Before assuming the worst on a hot water result, check the relief valve outlet. A valve discharging steadily looks exactly like a hidden leak and costs far less to fix.
Two minutes of that halves the search area before anybody arrives, and it is genuinely the most useful thing a householder can do.
The houses here went up across a few years from the late 1940s, so the original copper is now well past seventy. At that age pinholes are a normal failure mode rather than bad luck.
Copper does not fail all at once. It thins from the inside, in the places where the water sits or turns, and then it weeps.
So the first failure on an old line is information about the line rather than about that particular metre of it.
One is a repair. Two in different places is the installation reporting its condition, and it changes the question from what to fix to what to plan.
That is not an argument for replacing everything on the strength of one pinhole. It is an argument for knowing where you are.
The honest conversation is whether patching a third time is money spent or money postponed, and it depends on where the failures have been.
Which means the pipework is a cohort too, not just the hot water systems. Houses built within a few years, plumbed within a few years, failing within a few years.
A neighbour who has replaced a service line or repiped a bathroom is giving you genuinely relevant information here.
It is not a prediction about your house. It is a reason to look rather than wait.
They fail wide open, at mains pressure, in a cupboard nobody opens. Around five years is the service life and they do not degrade gracefully.
They are cheap, quick to replace, and the most common single cause of a genuinely ruinous indoor flood.
If you cannot remember when yours were changed, that is the answer, and it is the one item here worth doing before anything is wrong.
What a burst costs is decided in the minutes between the failure and somebody closing the water. The repair afterwards is ordinary work. Those minutes are flooring and cabinetry.
Find the meter and check its tap actually turns on a dry afternoon. On properties of this age they seize, and eleven at night is the worst possible moment to find out.
Learn the isolating valves indoors too, because closing one of those handles a specific failure without taking water off the house.
Water follows the fall of a joist, the back of a stud or the top of a slab and appears wherever it finally escapes. A ceiling stain can be metres from the fitting that failed.
Underground it follows whatever path the ground gives it, frequently a service trench, and it may never surface at all.
So the wet spot is a starting point rather than a location, and cutting into it is frequently the wrong first move.
Acoustic listening picks up the noise a pressurised leak makes through structure and soil. Thermal imaging finds the heat signature of a hot water leak behind a surface.
Pressure testing isolates sections until the one losing water gives itself away, which on an old copper installation is the tool that does most of the work.
Between the three, most leaks get located to a small area before anything is cut, and that costs less than opening the wrong wall once.
On an underground line, escaping water goes into the ground and produces nothing anybody would notice. The quarterly account is frequently the only symptom.
The order of work is the meter test, then the hot water isolation, then the run between the meter and the house. That last is the expensive possibility and the one worth ruling out early.
On seventy-year-old copper it is also a real possibility rather than a remote one.
The domestic ceiling is 500 kPa static at any outlet, and the valve that holds it there wears out at around eight to twelve years. It fails open, so nothing warns you.
Read the symptoms together. Taps that keep dripping after repair, water hammer that was not there before, and appliance inlet valves failing early all point the same way.
On aged copper it matters more, because higher pressure finds thin spots faster than normal pressure does.
On a line that has failed more than twice, the useful question is whether the failures have been in one area or scattered along it. One area is a repair. Scattered is a run.
Replacing a service line or repiping a section is a real cost and it is not always the right call, particularly where everything has failed at one end.
What decides it is the pattern and what the rest of the line looks like when tested, not a rule about age.
Fixed price agreed before anything starts. These are indicative 2026 ranges.
Narrowed down with acoustic and thermal gear instead of by opening things.
One figure to stop it, whatever hour it happens.
Depending on where it is and what has to be reached to get to it.
The cheapest worthwhile job on this page, by a wide margin.
What was found and what caused it, which is what an insurer actually wants.
Whether anything else has leaked recently. One pinhole and three are different problems with different answers.
Everything off, read, wait, read again. A number rather than an opinion.
Isolating sections, then acoustic and thermal equipment on whichever side is losing.
Not just the repair. What was found, and our honest view of why, on paper.
A licensed plumber answers. The first thing you will get is how to shut it off yourself, because that is the part that limits the damage.
Call 1300 381 569What Carlingford locals ask us before booking a plumber.
Ask us yours
The meter. Turn every tap off, make sure nothing is refilling, read it, wait an hour and read it again. Movement means water is leaving the system. It costs nothing and it converts a suspicion into a fact.
Yes, and it is worth doing. Repeat the meter test with the hot water system isolated. If the meter stops moving, the loss is on the hot side, and you have halved the search for free.
A failed flexible hose under a sink or basin. They go without warning, wide open, at mains pressure, in a cupboard nobody looks in. If you cannot remember replacing yours, they are old enough to replace.
Rarely. Acoustic and thermal equipment narrows a leak to a small area, and isolating sections tells us which part of the property is losing. Opening on a guess is the expensive method and it is not how we work.
It is worth treating as one. Pinhole failures in older copper are an end-of-life mode rather than an accident, and in a suburb where whole streets were built in the same few years the material is a similar age everywhere. Two in different places is a different conversation from one.
Isolate it. The tap under the sink, the valve behind the toilet, or the main at the meter. Stopping the water is what limits the damage and it is nearly always something you can do.
Detection runs $250 to $550. Making a burst safe is $250 to $500. Repairing it once located falls between $350 and $900 depending on what has to be reached. Swapping flexible hoses is $150 to $300 and it is the best value on the list.
Tell us whether the meter moves with everything off, and whether anything else has leaked lately. Those two answers do most of the work before we arrive.
Located with equipment, repaired properly, and the cause written down.
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