My water bill jumped with no change in use. What is it?
Usually it is a toilet that keeps running without anyone noticing or a leak somewhere on the buried pipe that feeds the house.
You can test for both yourself. Turn off every tap, appliance and irrigation zone. Find the meter and watch the dial or the small leak indicator for a few minutes. If it moves with nothing on, water is escaping somewhere.
Then test the toilets. Tint the water in each tank with a little food dye and leave it alone for a quarter of an hour. If the dye shows up in the bowl, the flapper is leaking, and that is a cheap part.
If the toilets pass and the meter still moves, the leak is probably underground on the service line. That calls for leak detection, which finds the failure point so the digging stays small.
Before you blame a leak, rule out a change in billing. Compare the usage figure on the bill with the same months last year. The dollar total can mislead you. A higher rate or a longer billing period can push the total up with no extra water used at all.
Want it looked at?
Do the meter test first, then tell us whether the dial moved. It decides whether this is a toilet fix or a line search.