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Plumbers of Spokane
Plumbers of Spokane
Plumbing · the Spokane area
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Slab Leak

Water getting out under a slab can't surface, so it saturates the fill beneath the house and spreads until it's located and shut off.

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When this becomes an emergency

What a pro does

The first job is confirming the house has a slab at all, because most of this housing stock doesn't. Full basements are the norm across Spokane and Coeur d'Alene, so a suspected slab leak usually turns out to involve a slab-on-grade addition, a converted garage, a mid-century ranch built without a basement, or a shop building on the property. Establishing which changes the whole approach. Confirmation comes next: close the main, watch the meter, and see whether anything is still moving. Then location, using acoustic listening and section-by-section pressure isolation, because concrete only gets opened once you know where the pipe is. Radiant heat runs are a real possibility in this region and get ruled in or out early, since a warm floor can mean a heating loop rather than a domestic hot water line. Copper buried in a slab fails from age and from contact with the fill around it, and once one pinhole has opened, the pipe's condition often argues for rerouting the run overhead rather than repeating concrete work in a year. Where the leak is isolated and the rest of the line reads sound, a small targeted opening is the better answer.

Frequently asked questions

Most don't. Basements are standard through Spokane, Spokane Valley and the older Idaho towns, so slab-on-grade tends to show up in additions, converted garages, some ranch-style construction, and outbuildings. The first thing a plumber establishes is which part of the house is actually over concrete.
It could, and it's worth ruling out early. Radiant tubing set in a slab produces a warm floor by design, and a failing loop can look a great deal like a domestic water leak. The two are traced differently, so the plumber checks what's actually in that slab first.
Decades of contact do it. Buried tubing sits against fill and concrete, and a small aggressive spot on the outside or mineral action on the inside gradually thins the wall until it opens. Age and chemistry are enough on their own.
Sometimes. A reroute abandons the buried section and runs a new line through walls or overhead, which avoids concrete work now and again later if the pipe is old enough that more pinholes are likely. Where the line is otherwise sound, a small opening over the located leak is less disruptive.

Slab Leak?

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