Municipal Water Mains · Continuous listening
Leak Noise Logger Programs for BC utilities.
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.
Free phone consult · No pressure · Mon–Sat 8am–6pm PT
Why utilities choose it
- Listens when the system is quietest and leaks are loudest
- Statistical confidence — multiple nights, not one pass
- Lift-and-shift covers big networks with modest hardware
- Correlation crews deploy only where loggers point
Built for
How it runs
- 1
Deployment design
Logger spacing follows pipe material — tighter on PVC and AC, wider on metallic — and the chamber/hydrant inventory sets the mounting plan. Zones with the worst loss indicators go first.
- 2
Night listening
Loggers record acoustic level and spread through the minimum-demand hours, night after night. A leak shows as persistently elevated, low-spread noise; a one-off use event doesn't — that persistence is the discriminator.
- 3
POI ranking
Data is collected (drive-by or upload, mode depending), and points of interest are ranked by leak likelihood. The output is a shortlist, not a map of maybes.
- 4
Correlate & confirm
Our acoustic crews correlate and pinpoint each ranked POI to a paint mark — the same Leak.ca confirmation chain, fed by weeks of nights instead of one afternoon of listening.
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
Why do noise loggers listen between 2 and 4 a.m.?
Because that is when legitimate water use bottoms out and ambient noise dies. A leak runs at 3 a.m. exactly as it runs at noon — customer demand doesn't. Persistent noise in the minimum-demand window, repeated across several nights, is the cleanest leak signature a distribution system produces. Daytime crew surveys fight traffic and demand noise; loggers simply wait it out.
Lift-and-shift or permanent deployment — which fits us?
Lift-and-shift suits most BC systems: a modest logger fleet leapfrogs zone by zone, each zone getting one to two weeks of nights, until the network is covered — then repeats on a cycle. Permanent deployment suits chronic-loss zones, critical mains, and utilities that want standing surveillance feeding their operations. Many systems run both: permanent coverage on the worst zones, lift-and-shift everywhere else. We design and run either, and pair naturally with our real-time water loss monitoring service.
Do loggers replace the acoustic survey crew?
No — they aim it. A logger says 'there is persistent leak-like noise near this chamber'; it does not put a paint mark on the road. Correlation and ground microphone work still localise the dig. The economics improve because crews spend their hours confirming ranked POIs instead of walking quiet pipe — on large networks that typically cuts crew time dramatically.
What do logger programs deliver to the utility at the end?
Zone-by-zone listening records, the ranked POI list with acoustic evidence, confirmed-leak reports with pinpoint locations from the correlation phase, and the quiet-zone documentation that's just as valuable — proof of which parts of the system are tight, which feeds straight into your loss accounting and capital prioritisation.
Related municipal services
Acoustic 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 serviceDistrict Metered Area (DMA) Leak Detection
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.
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 serviceStep 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 service← Municipal water main hub·Complete guide·Government programs
By BC region
Leak Noise Logger Programs 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.