Homeowner Saves Thousands on Water Service Line Repair

In her Raleigh, North Carolina, neighborhood, Jill B. watched her neighbors’ water lines get dug up. And she saw a lot of them get dug up. Failing water service lines seemed to be an epidemic in her neighborhood. She even had had leaks on her own water lines on three separate occasions.

“I have learned that, when the water bill goes up a little bit, it’s time to check the meter,” she said. “And if you wait a month, it will go even higher,” she said. “I saw that the bill had gone up, so I checked it and saw that (the meter) was still moving, although I had shut the water off in the house.”

Over the course of her prior experiences with water service line breaks, Jill has become the “community advisor” on water leaks.

“I’m the expert over here,” she said with a laugh. “I even have a key to turn the water meter off, and any time someone has a leak, they say, ‘go get the key from Jill.’”

Jill also had a cost-saving tool – an emergency home repair plan from HomeServe. She had already saved more than $2,000 on prior water service line repairs when, in October, she saw the telltale signs of another water line leak.

Jill called HomeServe and asked if a particular plumber she had seen repairing other water lines in the neighborhood and had heard good things about could be dispatched to her home. Luckily, PipeTech was already part of HomeServe’s contractor partner network, having met the company’s exacting standards.

“They happened to have an opening available,” she said. “I think I called in at 1 p.m. and the plumber was here by 3 p.m. That was amazing that it went so fast, I was lucky.”

Jill’s PEX water line was in such poor shape and had so many leaks that the entire 100 feet needed to be replaced, although the job was complicated by having to dig under multiple sidewalks.

“David from PipeTech told me that he treats every job like it was in his own home,” Jill said. “The communication was very good; it made it a very different experience – I felt like I was very in the loop.”

Although there was a delay while waiting for the utilities to be marked before excavation could begin, Jill felt grateful that the leak was slow and she still had use of her water in her home.

“Some of my neighbors had like Old Faithful, rivers running,” she said. “I didn’t have to turn my water off, because the meter wasn’t moving that fast. I had two neighbors within the last year who had major leaks. One of them shut the water off and left it off.

“The biggest holdup had nothing to do with HomeServe or PipeTech. PipeTech came out and was approved for leak detection right away. There was three areas where they could hear it leak. The thing that took the longest was for the utilities to come out and mark the lines. That took a week to get done.

“PipeTech did a good job, they cleaned up well, and they moved a lot of dirt in a tight space with a lot of sidewalks in the way. They put the dirt back, straw was put down and they swept the sidewalks up.

“I got a whole new line and I’m not going to worry about it anymore. I was very pleased and I just really want to thank you. Shout out to David (at PipeTech) – he’s a gold star guy with a gold star company.”