Municipal Water Mains · Zone metering
District Metered Area (DMA) Leak Detection for BC utilities.
Carve the network into measurable zones and the leaks have nowhere to hide. DMA support from boundary design and minimum night flow analysis through to the acoustic work that converts a high-MNF zone into pinpointed repairs.
Free phone consult · No pressure · Mon–Sat 8am–6pm PT
Why utilities choose it
- Turns vague system-wide loss into ranked zone targets
- Night flow data says which zones leak before anyone listens
- Post-repair MNF proves the fix in numbers, not vibes
- Pairs flow analysis with in-house acoustic confirmation
Built for
How it runs
- 1
Zone review
Existing DMA boundaries, meters, and valve status get verified — an open boundary valve quietly ruins zone math, and finding it is step one. Where DMAs don't exist yet, we support sizing and boundary design with your engineer.
- 2
Minimum night flow analysis
Inflow during the 2–4 a.m. window, less legitimate night use, estimates real losses per zone. Benchmarked per connection and per kilometre, zones rank themselves — the worst first.
- 3
Targeted acoustic work
High-MNF zones get the full acoustic treatment — loggers, survey, correlation — concentrated where the flow data already proved leakage exists. No budget spent listening to tight zones.
- 4
Verify by the meter
After repairs, the night flow is re-read. The drop is the receipt: litres per hour recovered, per zone, in the utility's own data — the cleanest program accountability there is.
Ground crews + aerial screening, one company
Leak.ca has pinpointed BC water leaks on the ground since 1999 — and now screens whole corridors from the air first when the network scale justifies it. Our drone thermal water main survey ranks kilometres into suspect zones; the crews on this page turn those zones into paint marks. One accountable program from flight to dig sheet — see the full municipal water main hub.
Utilities ask
What exactly is a DMA and why do utilities use them?
A District Metered Area is a section of distribution network with a defined, valved boundary and metered inflow — small enough that its flow data means something. Within a DMA, the minimum night flow becomes a leakage gauge: when nearly everyone is asleep, what still flows in is mostly losses. Utilities use DMAs because 'the system loses 18%' is unactionable, while 'Zone 7's night flow doubled since March' is a work order.
What is minimum night flow analysis in practice?
Inflow is logged through the lowest-demand hours, typically 2–4 a.m. Subtract assessed legitimate night use — a small allowance per connection plus any known night demands — and the remainder estimates real losses. Tracked over time, a step change flags a new leak within days of it starting; compared across zones, it ranks where acoustic crews should work first. It is the cheapest leak intelligence a metered system can buy.
Our boundary valves might be passing. Does that wreck the analysis?
It's the classic DMA failure mode — a passing or wrongly-open boundary valve lets unmetered water in or out and corrupts every number downstream. Zone verification (valve checks, sometimes zero-pressure tests) is built into our first phase precisely because of it. Finding one open boundary valve has 'solved' more than one mysterious loss figure.
Can you help us set up DMAs from scratch?
We support the leak-detection side of DMA establishment — zone sizing logic, boundary and meter placement from a loss-monitoring perspective, baseline night-flow measurement — working alongside your engineering consultant who owns the hydraulic design. Then we run the part that pays: converting zone data into located leaks, and re-reading the meters to prove recovery.
Related municipal services
Step Testing & Zone Isolation
Close valves in a planned sequence, watch the zone meter, and the leak tells you which segment it lives in. Step testing is the old, unglamorous, devastatingly effective way to shrink a leaky zone to a few hundred metres of main — before acoustic crews finish the job.
View serviceLeak Noise Logger Programs
Noise loggers deployed across the network — magnetically mounted in valve chambers and on hydrants, listening through the quiet hours night after night. Lift-and-shift campaigns or permanent coverage, with every point of interest ranked before a crew ever mobilises to correlate.
View serviceNon-Revenue Water (NRW) Program
Treated water that earns nothing — leaked, unmeasured, or unbilled — commonly runs 10–30% of production. The NRW program is the umbrella: water balance to size the problem, zone data to rank it, every detection method in this hub to locate it, and re-measurement to prove what came back.
View serviceAcoustic Water Main Leak Survey
Systematic acoustic survey of municipal distribution networks — correlators, ground microphones, and listening points worked block by block until every leak on the route list has a paint mark and a record. The backbone method of every serious water loss program since long before anything flew.
View service← Municipal water main hub·Complete guide·Government programs
By BC region
District Metered Area (DMA) Leak Detection across BC
Dedicated local pages for every city we serve:
Scope it in one call
System size, pipe stock, loss picture — and a firm program quote, usually in one conversation.