CathInfo.com

Yeah, been there, done that. In my case, we finally found the leak. It was a 2" pipe about 8 feet underground, I had to rent a small excavator to find it. I would think yours would be maybe a foot or so underground - still might be worth it for you to consider for the price, especially if you have septic field problems - I had to fix one of those too.

 I do not like plumbing, any plumbing. 

While you're suffering on here with TGK, I've been suffering with a major water leak. I still haven't found the leak, much less fix it.

My family of 11 doesn't have water in the main house. No way to wash laundry on premises. Dishes are being done on a folding table on the back porch with a spray nozzle. Toilets are flushed by manually filling the toilet tank with a 5 gallon bucket (which we fill outside). Hands are washed with a jug of water over the sink.

After breaking a pipe with the tractor (trying to move hundreds of pounds of mulch, trying to find the actual broken pipe) we put a shutoff on that broken pipe, so at least we can turn the water back on to our "house part 2" or annex. We have a small 600 sq foot trailer as an annex to our family home, a 1 bedroom trailer that serves as an office, homeschooling, storage, and sewing room. At least we have a full bathroom and kitchen sink with running water, but not in the main home.

We have a mountain range of mulch, and somewhere under it all is a broken pipe. It's not a simple question of "just call the plumber, man, give it up. Time to call a professional" even if I had the money. Because plumbers charge a lot, and they don't even have tractors to move this kind of mulch. We're talking about a mountain range of 20-25 connected dump truck loads of mulch. (The mulch was dumped here for free, which we use in our extensive gardening and orchard)

By the time I move the mulch and dig around for the pipe, fixing the pipe (a.k.a., "The part a professional plumber can fix") will be the easy part. I've mended PVC pipe breaks before. I'm comfortable doing it. What's taking forever is finding the leak. Normally the grass gives it away. Not this time. We didn't even know where our main water line went until a couple days ago! But even now, we only have a vague idea about where it sits in our yard.

Here's the worst part -- we've had this leak for weeks, because OUR FAILED SEPTIC SYSTEM was masking the symptoms. Our leach field is dead -- there is no green grass over it at all as per normal. Next to the leach field (the other direction) we had tons of green. Since we never stopped using water in our household, I could only conclude that the water was oozing/running that direction, as in "the water has to go somewhere" if the leach field pipes are blocked, etc. which they probably are. Our leach field is about 31 years old.

I have NO IDEA where our household water waste was going this past 2-3 weeks. Since all the green was due to the leak, I guess the water that normally waters the leach field has just been disappearing into the Abyss (hell?) Sorry for being dense I guess, but I didn't know that was a thing.

It wasn't until I dug up around our septic tank a bunch, and pumped out the second (mostly water) chamber myself with a utility pump, that I realized what was happening (i.e., the water leak). So I was slowly working the problem, but I only had so much time each day to work on it.

Did I mention the temperatures these days are 105 (feels like 115) during the day? We're in a high pressure system/heat dome/drought period right now.

When we finally get this water pipe fixed, then I can go back to my (just as serious) problem with the septic system. I need to repair it, extend its life, etc. because just ordering a new one is out of the question. I don't have $25,000 for that right now. I'm still unemployed.