Leak Detection in Corona

Corona sits in a basin where summer temperatures regularly push past 100°F, and that heat cycle — baking the ground hard in summer, then letting it absorb heavy winter rains — puts real stress on underground supply lines and slab foundations. If your water bill has crept up without an obvious explanation, or you’re noticing warm spots on a tile floor or soft patches in the yard, there’s a good chance you have a leak working somewhere you can’t see. RT Olson Plumbing, Heating and Air Conditioning has been based right here in Corona since 2014, so when we talk about the plumbing conditions in this city, we’re talking about the same pipes and soils we’ve been working around for years.

Why Corona Properties See More Hidden Leaks

The Inland Empire’s clay-heavy soils expand when wet and contract when dry — a cycle that repeats every year and gradually shifts the ground beneath slabs and trenched supply lines. Homes built during Corona’s growth spurts in the 1980s and 1990s frequently used copper supply lines that are now reaching the age where pinhole corrosion becomes a real concern. Older sections of the city closer to the downtown core can have galvanized steel lines that corrode from the inside out, losing wall thickness long before the exterior shows any sign of trouble. Because so much of Corona’s residential development is slab-on-grade construction, leaks under the foundation don’t have a crawl space to announce themselves — they migrate quietly until a water bill or a hot spot on the floor gives them away.

HOA-governed communities, which make up a significant share of Corona’s newer subdivisions, add another layer of complexity. Many CC&Rs require documented evidence of the leak location before any concrete cutting or landscaping disruption is approved. That’s exactly where electronic detection pays for itself.

Our Leak Detection Process in Corona

The goal of leak detection is to pinpoint the problem before a single tile is pulled or a trench is dug. We start with a pressure test on the supply system to confirm a leak is present and to isolate whether it’s on the hot side, cold side, or irrigation line. From there, we use electronic amplification equipment — acoustic listening devices that can distinguish the specific frequency signature of water escaping a pressurized pipe through concrete or compacted soil — to narrow the location to within inches rather than feet.

For slab leaks specifically, we also use thermal imaging cameras. Because hot water leaks raise the temperature of the concrete above them, an infrared scan can map the heat plume and cross-reference it with the acoustic reading. The two methods together give us a precise target, which means less concrete removed, less landscaping disturbed, and a faster repair. We document the findings with photographs and written notes — useful both for your own records and for any HOA or insurance review that follows.

Equipment & Methods We Use for Leak Detection

Not every leak sounds the same. A slab leak under a thick pour reads differently than a supply line leak in a wall cavity, and an irrigation leak in compacted decomposed granite — common in Corona’s drier landscaped areas — has its own acoustic signature. Our equipment lineup includes:

• Acoustic ground microphones for underground and under-slab leaks
• Electronic amplifiers and correlators that compare sound readings from two access points to triangulate the leak’s position along a pipe run
• Thermal imaging cameras for slab and radiant floor leak mapping
• Video pipe inspection cameras when the leak source is ambiguous or when we need to assess internal pipe condition before recommending repair vs. repipe

Using non-invasive tools first isn’t just about protecting your floors and landscaping — it’s about giving you accurate information before any irreversible work begins.

Local Note

One pattern worth knowing if you own a home in Corona’s master-planned communities: many of them were built with shared or parallel irrigation mains that run close to domestic supply lines under common-area landscaping. When a homeowner reports a high water bill, the leak is sometimes in an HOA-maintained line rather than the homeowner’s private system. We’ve learned to check the meter carefully and isolate which side of the property line is losing pressure before assuming the repair is the homeowner’s responsibility — it can save a significant amount of time and money to sort that out at the start.

Scheduling Leak Detection in Corona

RT Olson is available around the clock — if you’re watching your meter spin at midnight or you wake up to a warm spot on the bathroom floor, you don’t have to wait until morning to get someone on the line. Call (951) 344-5596 and we’ll dispatch from Corona. Because we’re locally based, we’re not routing through a regional call center or driving in from another county.

If your situation is less urgent — a slow creep in the water bill, a faint damp smell near a wall — scheduling a detection appointment during the week works just as well. Either way, the process starts with a conversation about what you’re seeing, and we’ll tell you honestly what the likely source is before we ever arrive on site.

If a rising water bill, a soft patch of lawn, or an unexplained warm floor in your Corona home has you wondering what’s happening inside your slab or walls, call RT Olson Plumbing, Heating and Air Conditioning at (951) 344-5596. We’ll locate the leak precisely, explain what we found, and give you a clear path to repair — no guesswork, no unnecessary demolition.