East Port Orchard: My Water Bill Doubled and Nothing Changed

Why this happens in East Port Orchard

The most common cause we find in East Port Orchard is a running toilet. A flapper or fill valve that doesn't seat lets water run silently from tank to bowl. On mid-size lots along Bethel Avenue with clay seams near Retsil underneath, that's where we look first.

We also check seasonal use you forgot, because in East Port Orchard it explains a real share of high water bill calls. Compare to the same month last year, not last month.

Don't overlook a leak on the buried service line. Galvanized steel from the 1940s, copper from the 60s and 70s, polybutylene from the 80s, brittle early polyethylene: all of it fails eventually, and in Kitsap's till and outwash it can leak for months with no wet spot. On East Port Orchard properties from the 1970s and 80s South Kitsap build-out it comes up more than you'd think.

Before you call

East Port Orchard is West Sound Utility District country, with 1970s and 80s copper and poly lines on hardpan that surface a leak eventually but downhill.

Before we arrive in East Port Orchard, three things you can do: pull last year's bill for the same month and compare. Drop food coloring in each toilet tank and wait fifteen minutes. Close the house main shutoff and watch again: still moving means the buried line. None of it requires tools, and all of it helps us locate faster on sloped lots above the inlet.

What happens next

Fixing high water bill here usually ends with high water bill investigation near Retsil: locate with meter flow timing and, report on older lots down toward Retsil, check irrigation. One crew, one visit, subdivision backfill over hardpan put back the way it was.

We've handled high water bill near Jackson Avenue where the cause was early poly on Jackson Avenue lots, and near Village Greens where till sloping toward Sinclair Inlet was hiding a drain failure. About twenty minutes across the inlet; we schedule East Port Orchard so you aren't waiting a whole day.