My water bill just jumped eighty dollars last month(now thats a problem). The first thing I did was to look under the house and much to my relief there were were no leaks under there that could have caused this much of an increase in my water bill. Since I cannot find a significant leak under the house or in the house, the next move is to check the service line.
The best way to start this process is to walk around the yard looking for wet or soggy spots in the ground. We found a very soggy spot right where a friend of mine had fixed a water leak for me about 3 years ago, and after digging it up we discovered that the patch had failed. The patch was originally intended to be a temporary fix but as time went on and it caused no more problems I simply forgot(ignored it) about it. Nothing like a good old slap in the wallet to get your attention! The service line is an old 3/4" galvanized pipe that has not really aged that well in this acidic soil.
We went to Home Depot and bought two PVC compression splices and a stick of 3/4" PVC pipe for $12.50. We then took a hacksaw and cut the leaky section of pipe out of the line. It was only leaking from one small pinhole, but we cut out about a twenty inch piece of pipe to make sure we got the whole thin spot(the pipe around the leak and about six inches in each direction had gotten very thin). We then sanded down the ends of the pipe until they were very clean and smooth and installed the compression couplings, and enough pipe to bridge the gap. We fixed a really costly leak for twelve dollars and fifty cents, and this repair only required the following tools and supplies.