Plumbing leaks can be incredibly frustrating for a number of reasons. They can be difficult to detect while simultaneously causing a lot of damage. To help you find any potential leaks in your home, here are some symptoms to look for:

Mold

Your first and most dangerous warning sign is mold, which likes to grow in places that are warm, dark, and wet. Plumbing leaks can provide that exact set of conditions, which means that if you find mold, you should immediately start looking for a potential leak.

The main health risk of mold is that its spores can cause respiratory distress when inhaled. This won't be too problematic for most individuals, but the elderly and the very young could suffer quite a bit from mold spores.

If you do find mold, you want to handle the situation as quickly as possible. To do this, you want to get protective gear for yourself (cover your eyes, nose, mouth, and skin) and use a strong cleaning solution (bleach is one of your most potent options, but vinegar or ammonia can work as well).

Low Water Pressure

Another big warning sign can be low water pressure in certain parts of your home. If an entire bathroom or a couple of rooms have much less water pressure than usual, then there might be a leak in the immediate vicinity. Based on which rooms are affected, you can get a pretty rough idea of where the leak is.

Water pressure will be fairly consistent throughout the plumbing system, which means that you can trace the leak relative to various forks in the piping. If only one sink is affected in a bathroom, then you can assume that the leak is after any forks in the system leading to other sinks, showers, or toilets.

Wall and Paint Damage

If you find blisters in your wallpaper or if you see strange stains, then you might be witnessing the effects of a water leak. Gravity will normally guide leaking water, so you can get a pretty good idea of where the leak actually is. In order to actually correct these leaks, you might need to open up your wall for better access to the pipes in question.

For this reason, you might want to hire a professional if you do suspect that you have a leak in your walls. While you might be able to fix a leak that you find beneath your sink, you don't want to open up your wall and work on pipes unless you know exactly what you are doing. You could potentially end up doing more harm than good, especially if you open up the wrong part of the wall. To learn more, contact a company like Servicemaster Of Martinsburg & Hagerstown.