If you’re like everyone else you know, you probably spend an inordinate portion of your day pondering the intricacies of slab leak diagnosis and location. Or to put it another way … what are the warning signs of needing plumbing repair under the slab? And how do you find the location of the leak?
By Debi Proctor
School is back in session. YAY!!! Temperatures are dropping. Fall is coming. And it’s time to think about seasonal plumbing maintenance.
We here at Gary’s Quality Plumbing want to take the time, before the rush, to let you know that we are so grateful to be able to serve our awesome community. We feel very blessed to have such wonderful and devoted customers. Most of you know that our advertising is mainly word of mouth, so please share your experiences not only with others but send us a note too.
Do you have low water pressure at your house or place of business?
A hole or crack in your water piping might be the cause. Since some of the water is leaking out you won’t get all the water needed at your faucet. The pipes that are below our slabs or below ground can’t be seen so the low water pressure is a clue that you may have a leak. Another clue is if you feel the floor beneath your feet is warmer in one area. That could signal a hot water leak beneath your slab.
Maybe you’ve noticed a ridiculously high water bill or heard water running that you can’t find, maybe you’ve noticed warmth on a particular part of the flooring; when it comes to unusual predicaments like these, you need to know whether or not you’re dealing with a slab leak. What to do if you might have a slab leak?
Don’t worry, we won’t just start busting! Our men are trained to locate the leak first.
These are some of the easy things we do to find out where your leak is:
Is it on the hot or cold water side?
Did the meter stop? If it did, you have a hot water slab leak.
There may be more detective work involved:
We hook a signal generator on the water pipe and follow it with our pipe locating device. Once we know where the pipe is we take our infrared heat sensor and find the hot spots along that line.
Then we must determine the depth of the leak with our pipe locating device. We use our geodesic headset and listen for the leak. If it is difficult to hear we will pressurize the system as the harder flow of water will make the leak easier to hear.
Not until this point will we break your floor and repair. We silver solder all joints below floor. We backfill with sand and pour back floor after testing. We do not put back finished flooring.
I hope this takes some of the anxiety out of your slab leak problem. Things never really are as bad as they seem. Hire the right plumber and you’ll be put at ease through the whole thing.
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