Weird washer fluid leak?

[kakerlak]

A week or two ago, I got a low windshield washer fluid message when I started the car. I've had it about a year and never topped it off, so I just bought a jug next time I was at the gas station and filled it back up.

That was the last I thought about it until getting in it today at the office to go home and being greeted with the same message. When I got back to the house, it was pretty obvious that the whole jug's worth of washer fluid was on the floor of my garage.

As buried as the reservoir seems at a glance, I'm not sure what I can easily observe, but it strikes me as odd that it would suddenly evacuate itself all over the ground overnight after holding tight for a week or more. But I'm kind of wondering if whatever happened today is what preceded the first low fluid alert, too. I seldom use the washer fluid, honestly, and definitely hadn't in the day or two beforehand.

 

[joegr]

Fill it back up and use the washer briefly. Open the hood and if you don't see the water pouring out somewhere, then you will have to take the wheel liner off to find the leak. If it's emptying the reservoir, it is very likely to be where the pump inlet pushes into the reservoir, where the wash hose connects to the pump, or the pump or reservoir itself.

 

[kakerlak]

Just an update on this... I'd kind of been putting off looking into the issue, but got an oil change in late October, right before a road trip and they refilled the empty washer fluid reservoir before I could tell them not to. To my surprise, it held perfectly fine for about two months, including a road trip that saw about an 8k ft elevation change, only to wake to to a huge blue puddle in my garage a few days ago. I haven't tried filling it back up again yet and probably need to spend an afternoon digging into it, but I'm struggling to imagine what could cause this sort of massive, yet occasional leak.