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How a slab leak is actually located
Nobody should be breaking concrete to go looking. Locating the leak is its own step, and it happens before anything is opened.
Nobody should be breaking concrete to go looking. Locating the leak is its own step, and it happens before anything is opened.
Before any equipment comes out, the system is isolated to narrow the search. Closing the water heater's cold inlet separates hot from cold — if the meter stops with the hot side isolated, the leak is in the hot water run, which is both the most common case and a much smaller area to search. Irrigation and the pool line are isolated the same way. This step is free and it eliminates whole categories of possibility.
A leak under pressure makes noise, and ground microphones amplify it through the slab. An experienced operator can often place a leak within a small area this way. Flooring, ambient noise and depth all affect how well it works, which is why it is usually one of several methods rather than the only one.
Sections of the system are isolated and pressurised to see which hold and which do not. This confirms whether you have one leak or several, and whether the line is worth repairing at a single point or has reached the stage where the whole run should be replaced.
A thermal camera finds the heat signature of a hot water leak through the slab. For harder cases, an inert tracer gas is introduced into the drained line and detected where it surfaces — the most precise method, and the one usually reserved for leaks the other methods have not pinned down.
You get a location, a cause, and a written price for the repair, with the realistic options compared: a spot repair opening the slab at that point, or re-routing the affected run overhead and abandoning the pipe under the concrete. Which is cheaper depends on where the leak is and how much of the original pipe is now suspect. Both should be on the table.
Not in itself. Acoustic, thermal and pressure methods are all non-destructive. Concrete is only opened once the location is known, if a spot repair is the chosen route.
It happens, particularly with very small leaks or difficult flooring. The usual next step is tracer gas. A contractor who proposes opening the slab speculatively is proposing you pay to guess.
The inspection gets a licensed plumber on site to assess and give you a written price. Extensive detection work is typically its own line item, and the contractor will tell you before starting it.
Send the details and we'll route it to a licensed local contractor.