Golf community · Gilbert
Seville: where the leaks are
Homes built from the early 2000s onward around a private golf course, which puts modern pipe under the houses and somebody else’s irrigation system right against a good many back walls.
Seville is a master-planned golf community in south Gilbert, with homes built from the early 2000s onward, which means PEX-era supply lines indoors and a large separately-owned irrigation system immediately beyond many rear walls.
Seville was built from the early 2000s onward around a private eighteen-hole course in south Gilbert, so the houses themselves are straightforwardly modern: PEX, manifolds, nothing that corrodes.
The thing that makes the community its own job is geometry. A large number of lots here back directly onto the course, which means a substantial, separately-owned, heavily-watered irrigation system runs along the far side of a garden wall. When water appears near that wall, the first question is not what kind of leak it is. It is whose.
What is under a Seville home?
Modern supply pipe: PEX or newer copper, because the community’s homes date from the early 2000s onward. Nothing in these houses is old enough to fail from corrosion.
Indoors, that means a connection failure rather than a pipe failure — a crimp, a manifold port, or the sweep where a line comes up out of the slab. The signs are small: a warm patch of floor with no sun on it, a faint noise at night, or a meter that keeps creeping after the house has gone still.
Related: slab leak detection and water leak detection.
| What we go on | In Seville |
|---|---|
| Build window | from the early 2000s, still building |
| City or jurisdiction | Gilbert, Arizona |
| Likely supply material | PEX and newer copper in the homes |
| What tends to fail first | drip laterals and hose-bib connections outdoors, ahead of anything under the slab |
| What we check first | which side of the rear wall the water is coming from, before anything else is opened |
How does Seville sit against Gilbert’s housing?
Seville is close to typical for Gilbert rather than unusual within it, since the town and the community were built through the same years.
Gilbert’s Census profile makes Seville look ordinary for its town, which it is. The American Community Survey puts the median year of construction for Gilbert at 2002, with nearly six in ten homes built since 2000 and almost nothing predating 1980.
| Housing across Gilbert town, Arizona | Share |
|---|---|
| Median year built | 2002 |
| Built before 1980 | 4 percent |
| Built since 2000 | 59 percent |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates (2023). Geography: Census place.
Water is seeping in at the back wall. Is it mine or the course’s?
The meter answers that before anyone digs. If the water is coming from your side, the meter will show it with the house and the irrigation shut down; if it is not, the meter will sit still while the ground stays wet.
That test is worth doing first because the two possibilities lead to completely different places. A loss on your side is a household repair. A loss on the far side of the wall belongs to whoever maintains that ground, and no amount of digging in your own garden will resolve it — it will just cost you a garden.
Course irrigation behaves in a way that makes this confusing without the meter. It runs before dawn, in large volumes, into ground designed to absorb it. Water moves laterally through backfill and along footings, so it can surface on your side of a wall having escaped several metres away on the other. Damp at a wall is therefore a reason to test, not a conclusion.
Related: irrigation and drip leak detection and underground leak detection.
Asked and answered
What do people in Seville ask us?
What plumbing does a Seville home have?
PEX or newer copper. The community's homes date from the early 2000s onward, so the corrosion failures that dominate older Valley neighbourhoods do not apply. What does apply is connection failure: a crimped fitting or a manifold port that was slightly imperfect and has been weeping quietly ever since.
The ground is wet along my back wall by the course. What should I do first?
Shut the house and the irrigation down and read the water meter twice, about ten minutes apart. If the dial does not move while the ground stays wet, the water is not coming from your side of the wall, and digging in your own garden will not find it. If it does move, the loss is yours and we can narrow it down from there.
Is my yard more likely to leak than my house?
On a lot like this, usually yes. Drip irrigation is shallow, thin-walled and runs through ground that gets dug and replanted, and it operates before dawn so nobody sees a failure happen. Isolating the irrigation valve and re-reading the meter separates the yard from the house in a couple of minutes.
Wet ground at a Seville property?
Send a photo of the area and a meter reading taken with everything off, and we will say what side of the wall it points to.
5.0 on Google
What customers in the Phoenix valley have written. The words are theirs, on listings we cannot edit.
“Humberto has been amazing! Prompt, professional, and patient. He has gone above and beyond, taking the time to show me how to operate the water valves and educating me so I can continue to monitor for future leaks. He identified multiple leaks and made thoughtful recommendations.”
“Beto was very professional, thorough and patient in explaining everything he was doing and why. It was an excellent and well worth it experience, and this is saying something for an architect who had a hundred questions!”
“The owner and operator of this company is everything a contractor should be. On time, honest, competent, reachable, comprehensive. Hope to work with him again in the future.”