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Slab Leak

Water escaping under a slab keeps going until it's found and stopped, and in red clay soil it moves sideways under the house long before anything shows on the floor.

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When this becomes an emergency

What a pro does

Location comes before anything else, because cutting concrete in the wrong place costs a floor for nothing. The plumber isolates sections of the supply and pressure tests them to narrow down which run is losing water, then goes over the floor with acoustic listening gear to put a mark on the spot. Brick ranch houses on slab are everywhere in the smaller Alabama towns, and in the ones built through the sixties and seventies the hot and cold runs were poured right into the concrete, often copper in a sleeve that stopped protecting anything a long time ago. Hot lines fail first, since heat and expansion work on the pipe every day. Once he's got a location, there are two honest paths. Break out a small opening, repair the section, patch the slab. Or abandon that buried run entirely and reroute the line overhead through the attic and down the walls, which costs more work up front but takes that stretch of pipe out of the ground permanently. Which one makes sense depends on the age of the pipe and whether this is the first pinhole or the third.

Frequently asked questions

Time and chemistry. Copper in contact with concrete and soil corrodes slowly from the outside, and water chemistry works on it from the inside. Hot lines also expand and contract every time the water runs, which abrades the pipe against the slab. Eventually a pinhole opens on its own.
Usually not. Detection narrows the leak to a small area first, and the opening in the slab is only as big as it takes to reach and repair the pipe. A reroute avoids the concrete entirely and moves the work into the attic and the walls instead.
Definitely. A failed shower pan, a leaking supply at a toilet, a bad seal at a tub, or groundwater wicking in at the slab edge all look similar from above. The pressure test is what separates a supply leak from everything else, and it's worth doing before anyone talks about breaking concrete.
That varies a great deal between policies, and often the damage is treated differently from the cost of accessing and repairing the pipe. Get the diagnosis documented, then contact your insurance provider and ask them specifically about both parts.

Slab Leak?

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