Key takeaways
- Service line: the private water pipe from the meter or well to the house.
- Correlator: a two-sensor instrument that calculates a leak's position from the time difference in its sound.
- Hardpan: the dense, compacted glacial till layer under most of Kitsap County.
- Footing drain: the perforated pipe at the base of a foundation that carries groundwater away.
Detection terms
- Acoustic leak detection: finding a leak on a pressurized pipe by listening for the sound of escaping water.
- Ground microphone (geophone): a sensitive surface sensor with amplifier and headphones used to hear leak noise through soil or concrete.
- Leak noise correlator: an instrument with two sensors placed on the pipe that computes where between them a leak is from the arrival-time difference of the leak noise.
- Low-flow indicator: the small triangle, star or dial on a water meter that turns with even a trickle of flow.
- Pipe locator: an instrument that induces a signal onto a metallic pipe or tracer wire and follows it from the surface.
- Sonde: a small transmitter pushed through a pipe so its position can be found from the surface.
- Isolation test: closing valves to separate the buried line from the house or the pump so the loss can be attributed to one of them.
Pipe and line terms
- Service line: the private water pipe from the utility meter or the well pressure tank to the house.
- Point of entry: where the service line passes through the foundation into the house.
- Main shutoff: the valve at the point of entry that isolates the house from the service line.
- HDPE: high-density polyethylene, a flexible black pipe used for continuous buried water lines.
- PEX: cross-linked polyethylene, a flexible pipe (often blue for cold) used for buried service lines and house plumbing.
- Polybutylene (PB): a gray plastic pipe used from the late 1970s to mid 1990s that degrades from the inside and is now a replacement candidate wherever it's found.
- Galvanized steel: zinc-coated steel pipe common before the 1960s that corrodes from the inside and fails at threads.
- Tracer wire: a wire buried alongside plastic pipe so it can be located later.
- Bedding: clean gravel placed under and around a pipe so it is supported evenly and not sitting in native clay or muck.
Ground terms
- Glacial till: unsorted sediment left by the Vashon glaciation; the dense, cobble-studded material under most Kitsap uplands.
- Hardpan: the compacted, nearly impermeable layer within the till, usually a foot or two down.
- Outwash: sorted sand and gravel deposited by glacial meltwater; found in valleys and lowlands, digs easily, drains fast.
- Kitsap Formation: clay and silt deposits common on the peninsula's slopes and bluffs that hold water and move seasonally.
- Water table: the depth at which the ground is saturated; close to the surface on Kitsap beach lots in winter.
Drainage terms
- Footing drain: perforated pipe at the base of a foundation that collects groundwater and carries it to an outlet.
- French drain: a gravel-filled trench with a perforated pipe that intercepts and carries subsurface water.
- Curtain drain / interceptor drain: a French drain placed across a slope uphill of a house to cut off groundwater before it reaches the foundation.
- Daylight outlet: a drain pipe end that discharges to open ground downhill.
- Dry well: a buried rock-filled pit or chamber that lets collected water soak into surrounding soil; only works in soil that drains.
- Catch basin: a surface inlet with a grate and a sump that collects surface water into a drain line.
- Cleanout: an access fitting on a drain line that allows it to be inspected and cleared.
Written by the crew at 360 Leak Finders
We locate, excavate and repair buried water lines and exterior drains across Kitsap County, 24 hours a day. If this guide raised a question about your property, call (206) 354-9906.