Last week the door from the kitchen to the garage was binding and I just assumed it was the normal slab shifting due to clay soil and dry conditions. No problem, just sanded the top a little bit and all is well. Right? WRONG!!!

Door started binding again. That's when wife noticed the grout line in floor tiles was cracked. After further inspection, noticed that a tile was cracked under the toilet in half bath. Sure enough, I checked the water meter and the dial was slowly rotating. After walking into bathroom barefooted, I realized the floor was warm so I shut the hot water off at the water heater and sure enough, the dial stopped. Wow, the heated floor felt awesome, but not in the summer time, and not this way.

Anyhoo, I've discovered 3 of my neighbors have also recently had broken supply lines. After talking with them, I understand how their hired plumbers fixed the issue by rerouting using PEX lines to bypass the broken line. I can do the PEX work, got the tools, know how and all, but how do I pinpoint the specific area of leak and determine how to bypass it with a PEX line?

The reason I ask this is because it costed them approximately $1,500 each to fix their issue and I can't afford that even with filing an insurance claim due to insurance deductible being close to that amount. Therefore, any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. TIA!

[This message has been edited by Gary79Ag (edited 9/14/2012 9:34a).]

been there, done that in 1982....hot line cracked right at far end of house

I said when I removed throw pillows from floor each morning the carpet and pillow felt warm...my husband said I was nuts. Must have been Februaryish and colder.

May rolls around and our elec bill for April(no heat, no AC, two adults and a baby, no guests) was $400!!! Crap hit the fan and got his attention.

TXU which was TP&L back then came out that day to do an audit. As the guy was leaving through the utility room, the water heater kicked on! He started asking a bunch of questions that my hubs couldn't answer so they asked me and I could tell them exactly where the warmth was. The leak was so small we never felt or saw damp/wet but the heater was running around the clock as the water was trickling out. The tech said, oh yeah, never tell your wife she's nuts because you will eat those words over and over!!!!

We were young and dumb and re-plumbed the line to the leak point ourselves for $200 in supplies and the plumber quoted $2500(those were 1982 dollars too!)

[This message has been edited by Mom Class of '03,'05 and '09 (edited 9/14/2012 10:53a).]

Happened at MIL's this winter. She ultimatly hired it out because I wasn't going to mess with it.

The funny thing is there were multiple, overlapping problems. First the water heater was leaking, so I repaced it, but found leak in wall too. So I fixed that too. Next, her water wouldn't stay hot, so she called Whirlpool to get a new regulator for he burner. They replaced the burner, but later she realized her yard was staying soggy through the drought, and we could hear wter hissing, even when the water was turned off.

Her final solution was to have a plumber do the Pex for a couple grand, leaving several large holes in her walls.

Trace your hot water supply from the heater to see where it goes into the slab ... if it goes straight into the slab at the heater itself, you may as well just replumb the whole house through the attic with PEX, because your cold lines are going to crack soon enough. You'll need to break the concrete where your cold supply comes into your house from the meter and re-plumb the entire thing up the wall to a distribution board and then run the branch lines. It's something I'd be crazy enough to try, but I'd get one bathroom completely on PEX from the distribution board before I shut off the water at the meter and broke into the concrete for the supply line. That way, as soon as you mate into the supply line, your next two tasks are "re-pour concrete" and "connect hot water heater to PEX" and your wife won't have TOO much to complain about.

The main risk with breaking into the concrete is that you might hit something structural in your slab or create a crack that further disrupts your foundation issues. I can't help you there; people who do this kind of thing for a living have all kind of fun metal detecting toys that I don't know nothin' about. That's one of the reasons I call pros for this kind of thing. I'm just a guy who has an opinion and an internet connection.

If you do hire it out, follow this bit of advice from a buddy who's a plumber and makes over 70% of his income fixing other contractors' bad work: Beware of any plumber that does drywall himself.

Why in heavens name do you have a hot water line running in/thru your slab?

quote:

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Why in heavens name do you have a hot water line running in/thru your slab?

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Um.....1960's house!

I own 2 of them. All the plumbing is in the slab.

1980's house. Plumbing in the slab.

1978 house and lines in the slab.

As other also noted, this one is a 1970's built house. All supply lines are in the slab.

How do you locate the main manifold water line entry point for a 1970's built house with a slab foundation?

Thought I had a high probability of finding it on the very first area of an exterior wall that I cut a hole into. STRIKE ONE!

A direct line between water turn off valve and hot water heater?

Gary: easiest way is with a shovel in the yard. Find which side things come from the meter, dig along the house's foundation till you find it.

our's is NOT a direct line! From the connection at almost street side it does go straight, then a sharp 90dg angle right and another 90dg angle left then reaches the slab

We think the builder intended the garage to be on one end and started from the street then his assistant(daughter) pointed most people want the garage by the kitchen and not the bedrooms! Maybe he chose a different floor plan but the street connection is on the free side of the lot and the house/driveway is on the opposite side.

What's the typical depth of the water line below the earth's surface?

Looks like I might have to do a little bit of "Willow Witching".

6 inches to 2 feet. Probably not a straight line.

Gary, our street was not paved when we bought and we all had septic tanks. In 1986 it was voted in to give us sewer connections with each home owner paying for their connections from house to street. The little old water witcher was used to find clean lines and he zigzagged many yards!

Thanks for all the inputs so far. Greatly appreciated.

Will cut another hole in the garage wall near utility room 1/2 bath where slab leak appears to be and hope to find the manifold in the wall there, otherwise it's strike two.

Will provide update later today with results of my findings. Keeping fingers crossed that my little ole water witcher works as well Mom.

quote:

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Will cut another hole in the garage wall near utility room 1/2 bath where slab leak appears to be and hope to find the manifold in the wall there, otherwise it's strike two.

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STRIKE TWO!!

Not a total waste as this is the area where I'll most likely have to PEX in the new line direct from the Water Heater.

And the hole cut in wall behind the Washer yesterday was also needed as I planned to replace the supply lines and shut-offs there due to badly corroded copper lines and valves.

Oh well, on to determine where I'll strike out at or , if lucky, hit a home run.

What fun! Where are you located? Seems like houses north of Houston have plumbing in slab to prevent freezing....

Fun my arse, Mr. Dubi

Just trying to save my pocket book from taking a major hit like my neighbor, David, took from a plumber doing a similar repair job fixing his hot water slab leak. He got a verbal quote of $500 - $1,500, the higher price included having to bust up and repair the slab in order to fix the leak.

Anyway, the plumber didn't have to do any slab work, nor did he have to cut any holes in the walls to gain access to the water lines as David had already done that before the plumber arrived. All the plumber did was cut and cap the bad section of copper lines and PEXed a hot water line from under the kitchen sink on one end of the house, up into the attic and dropped the line down the wall into the utility room approximately 40' and tied into it there bypassing the bad section. Total labor was ~4-5 hours tops.

When he was done, he told David that'll be $1,500 and he needed payment right then and there before he would leave the property. David questioned him asking why the high end price when he did the low end jod and the plumber stated that that was the going rate for the job he ended up doing.They supposed argued for quite a while and so David told him to just send him a bill and he'll pay it within 30 days as required by Texas law. The plumber said he wasn't going to leave the property until he got paid and sat down on David's couch. David finally got him to exit his house but he sat in his driveway fro quite sometime until David finally caved in and paid him the $1,500. Talk about getting screwed over, man that's one local plumber on my DO NOT THINK ABOUT HIRING LIST.

Sorry for the long rant above, but to answer your original question, I live in Sherman, TX.
Take care and know that I enjoy and always look forward to both you and Mrs. Dubi's HI posts and threads! Thanks for all your assistance in this matter.

Gary-
If you're looking for where the main water line goes into the slab, call 1-800-DIG-TESS. They'll come out within a day or so and flag all of the lines in your yard. I had to find mine when I added my water softener. I tried myself for a couple of days, then gave up and called. It took me 5 minutes to find it after the line was flagged.

Hey man, thanks so much for the input. I called and have it scheduled for this Friday.

BTW, how's the better half doing? Hope all is well and she's okay. Planning to be down there late Friday after I help my son and dil move into their new house. Maybe I'll see y'all this weekend. Take care!

If you didn't live at the wrong end of the state I'd be willing to help.

Contact me privately ( katzke at gmail ) if you want to know in detail how *I* would do it.

[This message has been edited by superspeck (edited 9/20/2012 8:12p).]

Superspeck,

Thanks in advance for any input you are willing to provide and I greatly appreciate your offer to help as well.

I just sent you an email as requested. Yeah I know I live at the wrong end of the state, as I'm originally from Hallettsville, TX which is approximately 100 miles south of God's country, but I got stranded way up here fresh out of college when I started my employment with TI.

It's too dang close to okie land, but I hope to be back in God's country this weekend for the fb game.

Again thanks and BTHOscs!!!

Gary-
Hopefully you're out with the guys flagging your lines, now. We'll be around all weekend.

[This message has been edited by Emeril (edited 9/21/2012 12:06p).]

Hey Gus,

Just made it to your in-laws a short time ago. Had to help my son and DIL move into their new house this evening in Little Elm.

Yeah, the guys were marking the yard the last couple of days. However, unfortuntely they do not mark the water lines from the meter to the foundation. But at least they did tell me that the water lines typically (two of the guys quoted it as being 9 out of 10 times) enter the slab at the nearest water bib to the meter so I guess I'll try digging there on Monday to see if I'm lucky.

That sucks. They sure a hell marked mine. Guess it just depends on what crew you get - they flagged the gas line to my house and the water line from the meter right up to the slab.

We had to do this not long ago. We had to have the new lines run on the exterior of the house and then insulated that way. Fortunately in TX it never gets so cold it was a big worry, but was a process I'd just assume not go through again!

Gus, they told me I'd have to rent the equipment to do tat marking as they didn't have it.

I had similar problem a couple of years ago. Noticed some water coming up through joints in wood floor. Had leak detection company come out to locate the leak. My house has two hallways with a wall separating the length of the two. The detection company couldn't pinpoint which side of the wall the leak was on. Before busting through the slab, my longtime plumber says "Well, do you feel lucky?" Turns out our first guess was wrong, so we ended up with a hole in both hallways. The plumber cut out the bad section of pipe and found a pinhole where the leak was coming from. His thought was that the pipe had gently rubbed on a pebble or rock for years and years and finally broke through. Luckily, we had extra box of wood flooring to cover the holes and the wood where we originally noticed water was ok. (The water had traveled under the slab for 4'-5' before making it's way through.)

Dang, been digging a hole by foundation about 3 foot wide in front of water bib. Approximately 27 inches deep already, but still no sign of water line.

Ground is hard as rock plus I had to bust up some concrete over spill from what I assume to be the original pour of the slab. Anybody have any left over sticks of dynamite laying around. I've soaked the area with water and it just pools, doesn't soak into the ground much at all even after sitting there in the hole for several hours.

Thank goodness it's not 100+ degrees outside. Man, this sucks!!!

Dear Gary,

I might have given up by now and hired someone. Just thinking out loud.

Sincerely, Dubi

Definitely understand and hear you loud and clear.

If it was the cold line, I sure would have. But it's the hot line so I can shut the water off to it and power down the water heater in the meantime.

Will hit it hard Monday and see where I go from there.

Well, I quit digging outside looking for the main line entry point into the slab, however I haven't given up yet on fixing this issue.

We bought a house 2 doors down the street a year ago and had recently decided we would eventually fix it up to same or better than current house due the all the back yard amentities, move into it and rent our current one out. Due to slab leak issues with numerous houses on our block, I've decided I would competely replumb that house installing a main distribution manifold and PEX all water lines.

Therefore, I busted the walls out near all the faucets, toilets, tubs, etc in that house to locate the manifold in it assuming that would help me locate it in the house with the slab leak. Low and behold, this confirmed what I was afraid of, NO NADA manifold anywhere in house, just series run hot and cold supply lines throughout the house with both starting at the water heater which is located in the garage.

With that understanding, I assumed the same series runs for hot and cold supply lines are also done in our current home, however the water heater is installed in a closet centrally located within the house next to the HVAC unit. With that in mind, I cut and capped the hot water lines between the washer and the 1/2 bath vanity. I then turned the hot water back on hoping I had eliminated the slab leaking section of plumbing but that wasn't it as the water meter continued to indicate a slab leak.

Okay, so the next section of series hot water line to the 1/2 bath vanity appeared to be coming from the kitchen sink. Therefore, I opened the wall under the sink and I cut/capped the hot water line and walla, that eliminated the slab leaking section according to the water meter. Whoop!!!

But, it also indicated that I still have a much slower leak somewhere as the meter did not stop rotating completely as I had expected and hoped for. It was however significantly slowed. Further experimentation by me determined that the flow rate was reduced from 0.310 gallons/hr to 0.035 gallons/hr.

Now it's on to determining a plan of action in locating the secondary leak. Not about to give up just yet and call a plumber as I'm bound and determined to fix this one myself! Determined ole farm boy!!!

If anybody has any recommendations and/or suggestions, please put it out here as I'm taking any and all inputs. TIA

[This message has been edited by Gary79Ag (edited 10/6/2012 1:06p).]

You can call me the Eveready Battery or better yet, after tonight, you can call me the Fightin Texas A&M Football Team! Whoop!!!

No give up in them nor me!