Signs of a hidden leak
- Water bill up with no change in usage — often the first and only symptom
- Sound of running water when every fixture is off
- Warm or hot spot on the floor — a hot water slab leak
- Low water pressure that came on gradually
- Damp carpet, buckling flooring, or staining on walls or ceilings
- Musty smell with no visible source
- Cracks appearing in the slab or foundation
- The water meter moves with everything shut off
Find it first, then open the wall
The part that matters is locating the leak precisely before any demolition. Guesswork means opening drywall or breaking concrete in the wrong place, which you then pay to repair on top of the actual leak.
We use listening equipment, pressure testing, and line tracing to narrow the location down before anything is opened. It takes longer up front and costs less overall.
Slab leaks
Plenty of East Bay homes are built on concrete slab with the supply lines running underneath. When one of those lines fails, the water has nowhere obvious to go, so it shows up as a warm floor, a high bill, or foundation damage before anyone sees water.
Depending on where the leak is and the condition of the rest of the plumbing, the options are usually a direct repair at the leak, a rerouted line that bypasses the slab entirely, or a full repipe if the system is at the end of its life and this is the third leak in two years. We'll lay out which of those actually makes sense for your house.
Pinhole leaks in copper
Copper supply lines can develop pinhole leaks as they age. The pattern matters: one pinhole is a repair, but several in a short span usually means the pipe is failing throughout and patching it one hole at a time gets expensive. See repiping.
Shut-off first
If you have active water damage happening right now, shut off the main and call. Knowing where your main shut-off is before you need it is genuinely one of the more useful things you can know about your house — if you don't, ask us to show you while we're there.