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Plumbers of South Carolina
Plumbers of South Carolina
Plumbing · South Carolina
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Slab Leak

Turn the water off at the main once a slab leak is suspected, because concrete hides the loss while the soil under the foundation keeps taking it.

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When this becomes an emergency

What a pro does

Confirmation comes before excavation, always. The plumber isolates the water heater to see whether the loss is on the hot side, watches the meter with the house closed down, then uses acoustic listening and pressure testing to narrow the location to a small patch of floor. Slab on grade construction took over South Carolina subdivisions from the 1980s on, especially around Columbia, Summerville and the growing towns along the interstate corridors, and a lot of that housing has copper supply running through or beneath the concrete. Two things work against it here. Warm ground year round keeps corrosion active, and where the water is soft and slightly acidic, as much of the state's supply is, the inside of the tubing thins slowly until a pinhole opens. Where a slab sits over old fill or marsh influenced soil, settlement adds mechanical stress on top of that. The repair is either a targeted opening in the concrete or an overhead reroute through the attic that abandons the buried run. On a house with one failure in otherwise good pipe, opening the floor is reasonable. On one that has leaked before, it usually isn't.

Frequently asked questions

Because the hot supply line under the slab is heating the concrete around it continuously instead of only when the tap runs. If there is no radiant heating in the house, a persistently warm patch with no other explanation is one of the more reliable early indications and is worth acting on.
Sometimes, by rerouting. The failed section is abandoned in place and a new line runs overhead through the attic and down inside a wall to the fixtures. It costs some finish work but no concrete, and it takes the buried pipe permanently out of the picture, which matters where more leaks are likely.
It contributes. Supply drawn from surface sources across the state tends to be soft with low alkalinity, and water like that is mildly aggressive toward copper over decades of contact. That is why these leaks turn up in houses where nothing was ever renovated or disturbed.
Ask, because coverage differs by policy and often treats the resulting damage differently from the cost of getting to the pipe. Contact your insurance provider before the floor is opened, and keep the locate report and photographs of the affected area from before any work started.

Slab Leak?

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Plumbing in South CarolinaBurst PipeClogged DrainDrain CleaningEmergency PlumberNo Hot WaterOverflowing ToiletPlumber Near MeSewer Line RepairSump Pump RepairWater Heater RepairWater Leak Repair

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