We had received a call last week about a slab leak at a home in Santee. If you are not familiar with a slab leak, it is plumbers lingo for a leaking water pipe under the concrete slab of your home. Most homes in San Diego are built on concrete slab as opposed to a crawlspace, and the water pipes are buried underneath. If a leak were to happen, you can either jackhammer up concrete around the leaking water line, or re-route the water line overhead in the ceiling. At this time you can either find a reputable San Diego Plumbing company, or attempt the repair yourself.
Whichever route you go, it is going to cost a lot of money and time. In this particular instance, the harsh minerals in the water had eaten a small pinhole leak in the hot water line. The hot water lines typically wear out quicker than the cold lines to due the increased friction that heat creates as the water moves through the pipe.
This particular customer had a slab leak in a different location before and we were told that he was ripped off by one of the big companies in San Diego. He said that he was overcharged for the work that was done, so this is why he attempted to make the repair himself.
The customer had done everything right so far. He shut the water to the house and drain all the water out of the system. He then pulled back the carpet from the concrete, masked off the walls with plastic to avoid dust from the jackhammer getting everywhere, and he rented a jackhammer from Home Depot. He located where the water was coming from in the hallway and started jackhammering up the concrete. Everything was going smoothly until he removed a piece of concrete, only to find that he had pierced a part of the copper water line with the jackhammer.
Since the type of copper that was used was soft copper, it was bent to make the turn in the wall. The customer was not able to make a new piece fit in because of the bend in the pipe as you can see in the picture. He searched out San Diego Plumbing company’s on the internet and came across. We were able to get out quickly and replace the pipe in a timely fashion. The customer was very happy and decided to patch the concrete himself.
There are a few things you as a homeowner can take away from this:
- Although the job may appear easy and straightforward, there are always hidden things that you can’t account for before the job starts
- There is no replacement for experience.
- If you are attempting a repair yourself and are unsuccessful have a San Diego Plumber picked out that you can trust. This will save time trying to find one last minute.