How To Find A Slab Leak

I know where the leak is located. Why can’t you just give me a price to fix the slab leak over the phone?

You would think it would be easy woudn't you? This web page will explain to you why it cannot be done accurately and why it is a very foolhardy thing to do. Some of this has to do with California Law.

I know where the leak is located. Why can’t you just give me a price to fix the slab leak over the phone?

It is something we shouldn’t do

We would never get your business, so telling you exactly how much of an investment your home’s plumbing problems are going to be is a bad business decision. Here is an example. Many companies now quote drain cleaning over the phone and advertise draining cleaning at very low rates. Type in drain cleaning in Google and you will find $99, $89, $79, $49 and I have even seen any drain cleared for $25 and in the PennySaver you can still, from time to time, see drain stoppages cleared from $4.50.
We do drain cleaning all the time for $99 and up and I have some coupons out there for $79, but if told you over the phone $99 you would be comparing me price to price rather than apples to apples with every other plumber out there and I would lose based on price. You see, what is the difference between the $99 and the $25? Nothing on the surface, but it is all the difference in the world when it comes to warranties, thoroughness and guarantees.

Here is why we cannot do it

How do you know where it is and what it is going to take to fix? Here are some of the reasons that I am told about where it is:

The floor is hot so the slab leak must be in the hot area

Just because the floor is hot doesn’t mean the leak is there. Most copper tubing under the slab is sleeved in a continuous piece of plastic to protect the copper piping from damage from the soil. The water will follow this plastic cocoon and leave it when there is a hole. It could be 25 feet away. Heat is an indicator that there may be a slab leak and a starting point for electronic leak detection, but not necessarily where the leak is.

Another company performed electronic leak detection and they pointed it out

That is excellent. It means that you qualify for a free second opinion and we will come to your home at no charge to you and verify that the leak is in the same place and, upon verification; we will give you a free estimate to either reroute or repair the leak under your slab. We cannot give you a repair amount for the slab leak until we verify where it is at and what the job encompasses. There are way too many variables and not all plumbers locate slab leaks very well. It is a specialty and takes skill, the skills that we possess after many years of practice.

I had slab leak before and it was in the same place – the water is coming up there

This doesn’t mean that the new slab leak is in the same place. It does, however, mean that your home may be able to benefit more from either a reroute or a repipe of the copper water system. When the slab was opened up last time a break in the concrete was made. The patch is usually not bonded very well with the existing older concrete. Most contractors don’t use the bonding compound that we use and most don’t bother with the reinforcement bars that we use to prevent cracking of the slab. This means that the patch will be a weak point and as water builds up under your slab it will come through the concrete as the weakest location, which is your old repair. Just because you had a previous slab leak in the same area doesn’t mean that the new slab leak is in the same area.

Legally it would be very foolish

We are on a job even as I am writing this page where a home flooded here in Southern California. We called the insurance company and a claim was started. We were approved for a certain dollar amount which was more than normal, but this job involved replacing the dryer vent line under concrete as well as rerouting the slab leak and some tile replacement. The insurance company approved the job and then kicked it down to an adjuster to come out and evaluate the job. The adjuster called (not a mainline insurance carrier) and told the homeowner to kick us off the job an not pay us for the work that we had performed. Mind you we already had the slab opened up, but the copper water line was not yet exposed as it was under some cabinets and we needed to tunnel to it.

The slab leak could be performed for $1500

The adjuster said he could get the job done for $1500….we were nearly twice that amount. We waited and the other plumber showed up. He wasn’t actually a plumber, but a general contractor and didn’t have the proper contractor’s license, no workers compensation insurance and no city business license. Long story short, he could not confirm the location of the leak so he called out another company to perform the electronic leak detection. Meanwhile the homeowner had to spend the night in a hotel as they had no water in the home. We would have been done the same day with the water on.

The other company came out and verified that the leak was exactly where we said it was and they gave an estimate $125 hire than ours. When the second company doing the plumbing said they could do the job for $1500 they entered into an oral contract for a home repair in excess of $750. This is a misdemeanor and a violation of State Contractor’s License Law, but more so than that, this oral contract obligated them to perform the work for the $1500 even though the scope of the job was closer to $3,000. They fled and left no contract in writing. All the homeowner was left with was a business card.

All the homeowner was left with was a business card and a hole in the slab

We are on the job today fixing the copper slab leak and rerouting the dryer vent which we should have done two days ago. I don’t want to perform work for a dollar below what it costs me to be in business and I don’t want to give you false hopes and low ball figures over the phone just to sucker you into a larger contract. I will only give you expert advice and detailed honest written estimates for every repair that we do. To do this, I need to see it and locate it using my state of the art equipment.