Leak detection and slab leak repair in Tampa Bay

Almost every house built in Tampa Bay since the 1950s sits on a concrete slab with the water lines run under it or through it. When a copper line under the slab develops a pinhole, nothing sprays; the water goes into the sand under the house, and the first sign is a bill, a warm patch on the tile where the hot line runs, a hallway that always feels damp, or the sound of water running with everything off. Copper on this water, pH just under 8 and chloraminated, can pinhole from the inside after a few decades; it is the most common slab leak call around the bay.

Call and get connected with an independent local plumbing contractor who serves your part of Hillsborough or Pinellas. Say what you noticed (the bill, the warm spot, the sound, a wet baseboard, mold on a wall) and whether the water meter moves when every tap is closed. A call connects you to the contractor directly; the form gets you a call back.

The meter test you can do first

Five minutes, no tools.

• Close every tap and make sure nothing is running: no washer, no dishwasher, no irrigation, no ice maker filling.
• Open the meter box at the curb (a screwdriver lifts the lid) and look at the small dial or triangle on the meter face. If it turns with everything off, water is leaving the system.
• Close the house shutoff and look again. If the dial stops, the leak is inside the house or under the slab. If it keeps turning, the leak is in the service line between the meter and the house, which is the owner's pipe.
• A toilet is the most common inside leak: a few drops of food coloring in the tank, and color in the bowl ten minutes later means the flapper. That is a fixtures call, not a slab job.

How a leak is found

Detection is a diagnostic visit, and its result should be a mark on the floor and a written finding, not a guess.

• A pressure test on the hot and cold lines separately, isolating the leak to one side; most slab leaks are on the hot line.
• Acoustic listening on the slab and the walls, with the line pressurized, to find the sound of the escape.
• Thermal imaging for a hot-water leak, which warms the slab above it.
• A tracer gas or a camera in the drain lines when the leak is a drain rather than a supply, which does not move the meter and shows up as a sinking floor, a smell, or a wet spot that does not track the supply routing.

Repair, reroute, or repipe

Three ways to fix a slab leak, and the house decides.

• A spot repair: open the slab at the mark, fix the section, close it. Least disruptive if the location is exact and the rest of the copper is sound.
• A reroute: abandon the leaking run under the slab and run a new line overhead, through the attic and down the walls. Common here because attics are accessible and because a copper line that has pinholed once will pinhole again.
• A repipe: when the leak is one of several, or the house has polybutylene or galvanized pipe, rerouting one line is a down payment on the rest. See the repiping page.
• A permit is required for the repair when pipe is replaced; the contractor pulls it. A repair over $5,000 on a direct contract also needs a Notice of Commencement recorded before the first inspection.