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Plumbers of Knoxville
Plumbers of Knoxville
Plumbing · Tennessee
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Slab Leak

Water escaping under a slab keeps saturating the fill beneath the house until it's found and stopped, so a suspected slab leak wants attention rather than watching.

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When this becomes an emergency

What a pro does

Slab leaks turn up in the newer end of the Knoxville housing stock, since the older neighborhoods are almost all crawlspace. Subdivisions built out toward Farragut, Hardin Valley, Powell and Karns since the 1980s sit on concrete, and that's where these calls come from. The plumber's first job is proving there's a leak at all, which is done by isolating the house at the main and watching the meter rather than cutting anything. Location comes next, using acoustic listening gear and sometimes pressurizing lines with air to hear the escape point through the concrete. The soil here adds a wrinkle. Limestone and the residual clay over it are chemically active in places, and buried copper in contact with certain soils corrodes from the outside in, which is why some slab leaks appear in houses where nobody has ever driven a nail near the line. Repair is a choice between opening the slab at the located spot or abandoning the buried run and rerouting the line overhead through the attic. Which one makes sense depends on the pipe's condition and where it sits.

Frequently asked questions

The newer ones do. Most of the housing built out west of the city since the 1980s is slab-on-grade, while the older neighborhoods closer in are overwhelmingly crawlspace. That's why a leak in an established area is usually found under the house rather than under the concrete.
With sound and pressure. Listening equipment picks up the noise of water escaping under pressure through concrete, and sections of the system can be isolated and tested to narrow which line is involved before anything is opened.
That depends on your specific policy, and coverage for the leak itself, the floor, and the resulting damage are often handled differently. Your insurance provider is the only source that can answer it for your situation.
When a buried line has corroded in one place, the rest of it has usually been in the same soil for the same number of years. Running new pipe overhead takes that section out of the ground for good, which is often the better call on an older system.

Slab Leak?

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Plumbing in TennesseeBurst PipeClogged DrainDrain CleaningEmergency PlumberNo Hot WaterOverflowing ToiletPlumber Near MeSewer Line RepairSump Pump RepairWater Heater RepairWater Leak Repair

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