In a historic house the leak is rarely the expensive part. What it soaks is.
Why detection matters more here
Plaster, heart pine, original panelling and hundred-year-old joinery cannot be replaced with a trip to a supplier. Locating a leak precisely with acoustic and thermal equipment means one small opening rather than exploratory demolition through irreplaceable material.
The one-minute test
Close every fixture and watch the meter. If it moves, you have a leak. Simple, free, and it tells you whether to act today.
Where they hide downtown
Crawl spaces and between floors, at corroded galvanised sections, and at joints adapted between old and modern pipe. Exterior hose bibs on masonry walls are another common one, and they leak into the wall rather than onto the ground.
Humidity turns leaks into rot
Charleston humidity means a slow leak in a crawl space becomes a structural timber problem faster than it would elsewhere. A leak found late here is rarely just a plumbing invoice.