Plumber in Desert Uplands, Apache Junction, AZ

In a landscaped lawn, a leak produces an obvious wet patch. In a gravel desert yard the water simply disappears into the soil, and the only symptoms are indirect.

The tells worth walking your property for: a patch that is suspiciously green in a yard that should be uniformly dry, an irrigation valve box that is always damp, a persistent soft spot in otherwise firm ground, or gravel that has migrated or settled in a line.

The definitive test is the meter. Turn off every fixture and water-using appliance — including the ice maker and, critically, the irrigation controller — and watch the leak indicator. If it moves with everything off, water is escaping somewhere. Then close the main shutoff at the house: if it stops, the leak is inside; if it keeps going, it is in the buried service line between meter and house, which is your responsibility.

For irrigation specifically we isolate zone by zone and pressure test, which finds a failed valve or a split line without excavating the whole system.

Desert landscaping with rock over compacted caliche sheds water rather than absorbing it, which means a monsoon storm moves a genuinely surprising volume across the surface of a property like this.

Two things are worth doing before June. First, walk the lot and confirm water flows away from the foundation rather than toward it, and that any area drains are not packed with gravel and debris washed down during the last storm season — a blocked yard drain stops accepting water at exactly the moment it is needed.

Second, find your sewer cleanout and make sure the cap is present and secure. An open or missing cleanout cap in a yard that channels storm water lets debris and runoff straight into your sewer lateral, which is a fast route to a blockage.

And if the main line has ever backed up, clear it in spring. A storm can push a large slug of water into a partially restricted lateral fast, and the surplus comes up through the lowest drain inside the house. The April version of that job is a scheduled morning; the July version is an emergency.