Mrthdrb

I have a shutoff valve in the crawlspace that operates just the four outside hose faucets. Heard the water rushing last year and sure enough the water meter at the road was reflecting water usage when we weren't using anything in the house.

I replaced the existing shutoff valve and it will shutoff the water to those outside faucets, but if I open it up the water is still rushing somewhere and the water meter shows usage. I have been everywhere in the crawlspace, inside the house, and the attic but can find no water coming out anywhere. The outside faucets will show a normal flow of water when I turn each on individually if I open up the valve, but no leaks to be found.

Any ideas? Do I need a different shutoff valve (I am using a standard one with the red circular shutoff handle)? Any thoughts would be appreciated. I let it go until now since we weren't here for months, in case you were wondering.

It's clearly NOT the shutoff valve - water is going somewhere, and the valve is shutting it off. So it's doing it's job. There has to be a pipe, or a branch off a pipe that is going somewhere and running water, after that valve, from what you have described.

Typically where water is heard and the water meter is spinning but you don't see any, it's going into a drain somewhere - why anything tied to the "outside faucet shutoff under the house" would do that, I surely don't know, unless it is irrigation or pool related - my usual suspect inside the house (because I had one that did this occasionally, and when it kept doing it every so often after I cleaned the valves to stop it each time, finally replaced it) is a water softener, but that seems highly unlikely here.

Depending strongly on the pipe layout, you might get an indication of which branch is most suspect by measuring the pressure at each outside faucet. Not guaranteed, but possibly one will be considerably lower than the others, and that would be the one to double-check the pipe to, for any branches you may have missed.

Toilets are the other usual one, but they tend to be more obvious as far as being seen/heard misbehaving. Not to mention that you'd notice it not filling with the shutoff closed.

To help narrow down where the leak is, you could gently heat up the various pipes (a hair dryer would work well for this). Turn the the water is on, and feel which one gets colder in temperature as water goes through it, as the incoming water is probably cooler than the ambient air in your crawl space. It may take a few iterations to find which of the outside faucets have a leak, but this at least would help you narrow it down a bit to at least a specific branch of your outside faucet plumbing.

Many times under ground pipes have rusted, or corroded or cracked and the water is going into the earth. If all your faucets are closed. I find a dowel is a good tool to listen for water movement, press the dowel to the ground then to your ear, move and listen again I have narrowed my search for a leaking water main from 100' to less than 2' by using this method. I have even found broken pipes under concrete , kind of like a stethoscope. I have found leaks in galvanized, copper and PVC in the ground.