Slab Leak Detection & Repair in Cypress, CA

Why Cypress has so many slab leaks

Cypress started out in 1956 as Dairy City, a town of dairies and farms, and was nicknamed "Waterville" for its artesian wells. When the farmland gave way to housing in the late 1950s, 60s and 70s, builders put up tract after tract of single-story and two-story homes on concrete slabs, with copper water lines laid under or through the concrete. Those lines are now 50 to 65 years old, sitting in soil that's high in moisture and shifts with every wet winter and dry summer. That's the recipe for slab leaks.

What a slab leak feels like from inside the house

• A floor that's warm in one spot - a hot water line is leaking beneath it
• The hiss or trickle of water when nothing is turned on
• A water heater that seems to run all the time
• A water bill that climbs month after month
• Damp or musty carpet along a wall, or warped wood flooring
• Hairline cracks appearing in tile
• Low pressure at several fixtures

Confirm it with the water meter

Turn off every faucet, appliance and the sprinkler controller. Find the meter box near the curb and watch the small low-flow indicator. If it's turning, water is going somewhere. Then close the main valve at the house: if the indicator stops, the leak is inside the home - quite possibly under the slab. If it keeps moving, the leak is likely in the service line between the meter and the house, or in irrigation.

Before you assume the worst, rule out a toilet. A few drops of food coloring in the tank will show up in the bowl within 15 minutes if the flapper is leaking.

How the leak is found

Good slab leak work is about precision. Breaking concrete in the wrong place is expensive and disruptive, so plumbers narrow it down step by step:

1. Isolate the line. Pressure tests on the hot and cold systems separately show which one is losing pressure.
2. Trace the pipe. Electronic line tracing maps where the pipe runs under the floor.
3. Listen. Ground microphones and acoustic sensors pick up the sound of water escaping through the slab.
4. Look for heat. Thermal imaging shows warm spots from a leaking hot line.

Three ways to fix it

Spot repair. Open a small section of floor directly over the leak, fix the pipe and patch the concrete. It's the most direct route when the rest of the plumbing is in decent shape and the leak sits under an easy-to-patch floor.

Reroute. Leave the failed pipe in the slab and run a new line through the attic and down the walls to the fixtures it served. No concrete is broken, and that run of plumbing is out of the slab for good. Very common in Cypress' single-story tracts.

Whole-house repipe. When a home has had two or three slab leaks, or exposed copper looks thin and corroded, replacing all the supply lines overhead often makes more sense than chasing leaks one by one. See PEX repiping.

Questions worth asking

• Which line is leaking, and how sure are you of the location?
• Why spot repair versus reroute for this house?
• How many wall or ceiling openings will a reroute need, and who patches them?
• What will happen to the flooring above a spot repair?
• Is a permit needed, and will you handle it?

While you wait

• Hot water leak? Close the cold-water valve on top of the water heater.
• Not sure which line? Close the main when you aren't using water.
• Pull back wet carpet and pad and run fans.
• Keep your recent water bills - they show when the leak started.