Rocketman Plumbing here in Albuquerque, New Mexico, offers fast repairs done right. We handle your residential and commercial HVAC and plumbing needs to keep your home or business running smoothly all year long. Clients have asked me before, how do you go about detecting a slab leak, which is a water leak underneath the slab foundation of your house? That’s what I want to go over with you today. Mainly, it’s a matter of deduction by following the steps below.
Turn Off the Water to Your House
As long as you have a shutoff valve in your house that works, the first thing you would do to detect a slab leak is turn that shutoff valve off. Then go out to the water meter and see if it’s still spinning. If it’s still spinning, then it might not be a slab leak at all. It could be a leak in your water line.
If the meter stops spinning, then you go turn that shutoff valve back on, watch the meter spin again, and go to your hot water heater and shut off the valve to that. If the leak stops when you turn the water off to the hot water heater, that tells you that you have a hot water slab leak. And the good thing about that is hot water slab leaks are easier to find.
How Plumbers Can Find a Hot Water Slab Leak
Often, you can just get a heat laser gun, point it on the floor, and look for the hot spot. The hot spot tells you where the leak is. If it’s a big leak, they’re usually fairly easy to find.
Sometimes we drill a few small holes in the concrete slab to look for mud and water. If it’s a very small leak, sometimes we refer the job to a company that specializes in small slab leaks because they have some very specialized listening equipment that lets them hear the drips from a leak. About 85% of the time, we can find them ourselves. But if we can’t, we would recommend another company.
Once we find the leak, then we’ll give you an estimate to do what’s necessary to fix the leak. The good thing about slab leaks, if there is such a thing, is they are almost always covered under insurance, which helps.
Call Rocketman for Expert Slab Leak Repairs
I hope you don’t have any leaks, but if you do, give us a call at 505-375-6602 and we’ll be there in a flash to repair them for you.