When A Sump Pump Won’t Rest: Tracing A Costly Underground Water Leak

The sump pump wouldn’t quit, the skies were clear, and the water meter sat perfectly still—yet the service line whispered a steady roar. We follow that mystery from the first clue to the likely culprit: a hidden water leak just outside the foundation, feeding the perimeter drains and keeping the pump cycling. Along the way, we show how a sonic listening device turns guesswork into evidence by tracing sound intensity through soil to narrow the dig and confirm the source.

We break down what matters to every homeowner and buyer: where the city’s responsibility ends and yours begins, why the location of the shutoff and meter decides who pays, and how to involve your municipality to verify ownership. We also unpack the real costs of water line repairs, why polyethylene service lines can sometimes be spot-repaired, and how saturated soil near a foundation can become a winter hazard as freezing and expansion stress concrete. Even a finished basement that looks dry can be masking continuous loss if the sump is doing overtime.

If you’re house hunting, we explain why standard inspections don’t include exterior water service testing or sewer scoping, and how those add-ons—like radon or termite checks—can prevent five-figure surprises after closing. With clear examples, we cover using findings to negotiate repairs or credits, and why proactive maintenance inspections help owners catch problems before they escalate. Forewarned is forearmed: when a pump runs on sunny days, it’s not a coincidence—it’s a signal.

Subscribe and share this episode with someone buying in an older neighborhood, and leave a review to tell us the trickiest mystery your house has thrown at you.

Chapters

• 0:01 The Sump Pump Puzzle
• 0:24 No Rain Yet Water Keeps Flowing
• 1:04 Listening For Leaks At The Service Line
• 2:11 How Perimeter Drains Feed The Sump
• 3:15 Confirming With Sonic Equipment
• 4:23 Tracing Responsibility City Or Owner
• 5:38 Risks Costs And Winter Concerns
• 7:10 Extra Inspections Beyond Scope
• 10:45 Negotiation And Preventive Maintenance
• 11:47 Wrap Up And Winter Prep

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:01

Alright, Laura. I have you helped me with this one. Yes. So we I did inspection the other day, and there was some odd, there was something odd going on in the house. Now it has not rained here. It rained yesterday.

SPEAKER_01: 0:18

But it hadn't prior to it.

SPEAKER_02: 0:20

But it had not rained for like almost a week before the inspection. But yet I'm at this house and the sump pump is turning, kicking on automatically by itself because I can hear the water going trickling into it constantly. Sump probably went off every 20 minutes, 30 minutes, something like that.

SPEAKER_01: 0:40

I think it was faster than that when we were out.

SPEAKER_02: 0:43

You think it was faster? Okay. So, which is kind of odd. Where's that water coming from? They don't live near a lake. No creek. It has not rained. Now, downspout was were not well connected. I did see it. So that can be that can be part of it. But like I said, it had not rained for over a week. When I was near the I can I can hear it from a couple feet away, the water service line from the city wall, you know, water line bringing water to you from the city to your house. I can hear water flowing. But at the same time, I'm looking at that water mirror that was down in the basement, and that dial is not spinning at all. So there's no water movement through that meter going in the house. And I already had looked, and there's I had no water running within the house. Dishwasher off, all the water faucets were were off. No water usage at all in the house. But I can hear water going through uh the meter.

SPEAKER_01: 1:49

Right. Through that pipe, which I could even hear, and my hearing's not as good as yours.

SPEAKER_02: 1:54

You put your ear up against that pipe, you can hear it. Definitely. So my suspicion was that there is a service line coming into the house, bringing the water to the house, it is disconnected or broken somewhere.

SPEAKER_01: 2:10

Or some kind of leak.

SPEAKER_02: 2:12

There's a leak somehow, because water's coming into the house. But so it's not completely disconnected. Right. There's a there's a leak. Because my my suspicion is that there's water leak at the service line, and it's just it's right outside that foundation. As the water saturates that soil and goes down, it goes into the perimeter drain line, which are pipes on the outside of the house and newer houses out and the inside as well, those just below the footers, and that will take the water and route it to the sump pump to keep your basement from getting flooded. Help helps me get flooded.

SPEAKER_01: 2:52

Probably very helpful in this case.

SPEAKER_02: 2:55

So to me, that that makes perfect sense. Right. There's a water leak, it's going into the pipes, which is now getting directed to the sump pump, and that's why the sump pump is going off like every 15 minutes or so. So we we put that in the report, let them know. Hey, hey, we we suspect this. Let them know we do have an instrument, it's a sonic listening device, which is crazy sensitive. So I I could put this probe into the dirt and listen for sounds.

SPEAKER_01: 3:24

Which was crazy to me because you could actually hear like the water whooshing and leaking out.

SPEAKER_02: 3:31

It was it's got a constant little bit like a roar. Yeah, it was it was it was not like a lion roar, but it's like constant like something's going on as I move further back. It lessened, it lessened. But this this thing is so sensitive when you drop your sandals on the on the ground, and I'm like four or five feet away from you, I can hear the sandals hitting the ground. That's yeah, and that's how sensitive this listening equipment is. So, anyway.

SPEAKER_00: 3:58

Habitation investigation is the way to go for a home inspection in Ohio. Trusted licensed home inspectors for your needs. From radon to malt to warranty. For a great home inspection, you really can't go wrong. Visit home inspections in Ohio.com.

SPEAKER_02: 4:23

Tried tracing the pipe, and you were tapping on the service pipe slightly, slightly tapping it, and I could trace that out to the yard, all out to the to the sidewalk area. Like I guess I can hear where the service line is, but the only area where I can hear like the noise is near the house, which once again that makes sense. It's the sump pump going constantly, it hasn't there's no rain for a while, no water usage.

SPEAKER_01: 4:54

It's getting into the sump pump somehow.

SPEAKER_02: 4:56

Wow. Yeah, you got it. Water's going it's just outside that foundation, water goes down outside the foundation, then something could come inside, which it is, with your perimeter drained in drain your drain pipe inside that basement is catching that and directing it to the sump pump to kick it out. So it's doing the sump pump and the pipes are doing exactly what they're designed to do.

SPEAKER_01: 5:18

Which is good.

SPEAKER_02: 5:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 5:20

So but whose responsibility would be to fix that? Because that's not quite with the city, it's not quite with the homeowner.

SPEAKER_02: 5:31

So here's what you here's what you do with that. Some homeowners insurances will cover water line leaks, supply line coming in. Okay. You need to have that coverage. Often the city, if it's and that's why we were out in the yard trying to find the meter, we could not locate the meter. It's it's it's buried, it's buried underneath the dirt, maybe mulch. I I didn't see the meter anywhere. It was a while tracing that line out all the way out to the sidewalk. So if it's before the meter, 100% that that's that's the city's. But after the meter, that's gonna be the homeowner's responsibility almost always.

SPEAKER_01: 6:14

And we couldn't find the meter on this one, so we have absolutely no clue where it was at, but probably given how close it was to the house.

SPEAKER_02: 6:22

I I should rephrase it. The meter was in the house, but the city has a shutoff outside somewhere. Okay. That's what I'm sure that I couldn't find the city shut-off. So we don't know who it was. We don't know whose responsibility this would be. So my recommendation for the seller in this case, which we have not talked to, and we almost never know their name or contact information, is they should contact the city and say, hey, we suspect we have a water leak, and then the city can come out and look at their stuff, and they will confirm, like, yeah, this is a water leak, it's on our side, we'll take care of it, which is the best scenario for the buyers and sellers, or they say there is a leak, it's on your side, you're gonna have to get somebody to fix it. Which that if that happens, that sucks for the seller, but hopefully they have some type of insurance that will cover that. That would be nice. Because what's gonna happen, because all right, winter's coming. If that ground is saturated and it freezes and and expands, it can cause some issues to the foundation. Definitely gonna cause some wetness inside of that. And it was a finished basement. I did find moisture around the meter area on the floor there, so it is it is actually leaking out somehow. Somehow, somehow there's moisture getting there. So hopefully it's on the city side, the city will take care of it, or the people have an insurance to cover that. I I tried to find out what the average cost is for waterline repairs. It's all over the place. I think$15,000 to$3,000. Kind of depends what all they think they need to re replace.

SPEAKER_01: 8:08

How far they have to dig and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_02: 8:10

Yeah, if this is uh what this is a polyethylene uh pipe. So they could just dig down and re-cut it and replace a section of it, hopefully.

SPEAKER_01: 8:22

Which would not be that bad at all. Heck, we could do that. I mean, that's pretty simple. It would just be finding that leak.

SPEAKER_02: 8:29

Finding the leak, which according to the listening device was close to the house, close to um the house there. So they just dig straight down, they'll probably start digging down, hit a bunch of water, hit a bunch of wet dirt, and then let's say, oh, there it is.

SPEAKER_00: 8:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 8:44

I would like to be there, or at least see a picture of the water leaking, because I like to see how how much was flowing out. It looks like there's quite a bit flowing out. There really does. Based on on how fast that sump pump was was firing.

SPEAKER_01: 8:59

Yeah, and it wasn't just a little water, like when you were out in the street, you could look and you could go the whole way down, like several houses down the street and see where this had been obviously flowing for a while.

SPEAKER_02: 9:12

Yeah, the sump pump kicked the water out to the curb, which is nice.

SPEAKER_01: 9:15

Right, and it was doing its job.

SPEAKER_02: 9:18

So yeah, if if you if you're in a Columbus, Ohio, Central Ohio area, and you uh are buying a house, you may want to consider having that that test done to your house. We can come by up the sonic listening device and help identify if there are any leaks. Now, will this thing catch every little tiny leak? If there's like a tiny, super tiny leak that just barely drips out into the soil, that's not it's not gonna pick that up. It's it's it's just it's just not enough. But you it is best chance and only chance really to have that that checked out because the water line is outside the scope of the standard home inspection. You have to pay for extra services to do that. Just like when you do radon testing, termite, that's that's not within the scope of the home inspection. And a lot of people don't know the sewer line. Once it passes through the the uh foundation wall, the floor, that's outside the scope of the home inspection as well, which is why you pay to have your sewer line scoped. Yes. That way you know, hey, 62 feet out, there's there's a damaged pipe. That is gonna be very expensive to fix. So you want to make you want you want to know everything about the house before you buy the house.

SPEAKER_01: 10:33

Because once you buy that and you sign those papers, whatever problems you didn't know about, they're still your problems.

SPEAKER_02: 10:39

Still your problem.

SPEAKER_01: 10:39

And you're paying for them.

SPEAKER_02: 10:41

Yeah. Well, on the home inspection, even though say you say just did the hand standard home inspection, didn't do the sewer scope or didn't do the waterline leak test. If that shows up down the road, a home inspection company is not responsible for that. Because that is by law, by the state's standard, that is outside of the scope of the home inspection. Right. There's nothing you can do about it other than pay money to get it fixed.

SPEAKER_01: 11:07

But at least if you have that tested or looked at prior to closing on the house, you have a better idea of what's going on and you walk into it knowing you know how much you're gonna have to pay. So if you go in and you know that you've got problems with your sewer line, that can be negotiated potentially depending upon your contract and the agent that you have.

SPEAKER_02: 11:28

Yep. Forewarned is forearmed. Yep. And then if you're not selling, it's just nice to know there's nothing going off your your water line before it becomes a bigger issue.

SPEAKER_01: 11:37

Well, maintenance inspections are really important, and we should talk about those sometime.

SPEAKER_02: 11:41

We are starting to do a lot more maintenance inspections. Yes, we are. Yes, we can definitely do that on another uh another episode. But I think that's it for the day. Everybody take care. Um, get your house ready for winter if you haven't done not done that already.

SPEAKER_01: 11:54

All right, bye, everyone.

SPEAKER_02: 11:55

Bye bye.