Slab Leak Detection: If You’re Pouring Money Into Your Water Bill, Let’s Check For A Hidden Leak | Mansfield, Texas
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Before you start timing everyone’s showers to save on your water bill, it might make sense to hunt around and see if your home is wasting water on its own. Even toilet leaks from aging flapper valves can add up significantly. Also, some of the biggest leaks such as water line problems in the pipe from the street or leaks under the slab can be hard to notice except by reviewing your bills or running a few tests with your water meter. In fact, if you do suspect water leaks and you don’t see or hear anything suspicious, calling in a slab leak detection company can help you save time and money homing in on at least one of the places where your money is leaking into the ground. Serving the Mansfield, TX area, Slableak.com is your local expert on troubleshooting wasted water from your home’s plumbing.
Checking for Water Meter Movement When All Is Quiet
A basic way to check for water leaks is to make sure all water use in the home is shut down and check the reading on the water meter once, then again in a few hours. Your plumber can tell you what motion of the dial might indicate a toilet leak and what suggests multiple leaks or a major one. EPA reports indicate that a significant portion of homes waste 10,000 gallons per year or more, so don’t be surprised if you do catch a bit of waste that can be addressed. As expert plumbers, our slab leak detection team can chase down leaks throughout the house, often adding up to hundreds of gallons a month or more. Beyond that, we’ll start with a detection and see what’s getting lost into the ground. It could be a small leak now, growing later, or it could be a significant amount, with only minor leaks showing up around your house.
Slab Leak Detection Is an Advanced Version of Whole-House Leak Sleuthing
Our slab leak detection methods include special gear that listens for the sound of water under pressure exiting from pipes. It can also help determine the location of the leak. This gives us great skills at determining where invisible leaks are during slab leak detection, but it can also help us locate leaks in your walls and ceilings. We can “sweep” your home and find not only potential sources of wasted water, but leaks that will someday cause damage to your home. It can take a while for water to seep through and become visible, or linger and grow mold, so you’ll be ahead of the game when we detect leaks through technology.
Other Ways That Wasted Water Can Cost You in Damage
As slab leak detection experts, we don’t just save our customers money on wasted water. When leaks happen under your foundation and large pockets of water gather, soil can be displaced, pressure on the concrete can cause cracking and fractures, and your foundation’s stability can be endangered. You might also notice areas of your yard turning into swampland, or perhaps just exceptionally healthy landscaping. If you do, this could help confirm our slab leak detection results and guide the repair effort.
Moisture seeping from under your foundation or into your walls can also attract insects and vermin, adding the services of an exterminator to your costs. Basement floor damage is common when water accumulates below, sometimes seeping through the concrete or rising up and flooding via your sump. When the pipe damage is part of your hot water system which sometimes is routed under the slab, you’ll find strangely warm spots on the basement floor. If the under-slab hot water leak isn’t detected, you’re likely to spend time and expense diagnosing and even repairing the hot water heater before slab leak detection determines the real source of the problem.
Local Knowledge Helps Find Trouble
As local experts in the Mansfield, TX area, we understand the local soil and construction methods, which can be a great benefit to you. For instance, clay soil, when it shifts, can damage piping underneath the slab on your home and help us determine what the best repair techniques will be. If we note that further damage is likely, we may suggest that pipe rerouting into the basement be performed instead of doing all the work to dig under the slab or cut through the concrete to make repairs. Either way, once the repairs are performed you’ll see a big difference in your water bill. For home types that we are already familiar with, this process will be a simple repeat of repairs we’ve made in the past, saving time and cost.
Habit Changes Complete the Picture
After slab leak work, checking for leaks in the walls, finding and repairing leaky toilets, faucets, and fixtures, we should have that meter movement test down to nearly nothing. That will make a big difference in your monthly water bill, and also possibly save you a lot in potential damage. To further lower your monthly bill you can review the habits that save people money on water, including running only full loads of laundry and shutting off faucets when the water’s not in use during tooth brushing and cooking.
Your Slab Leak and General Plumbing Professionals
Slab leak detection is a specialized type of plumbing expertise, using the principles of physics to locate leaks where once cutting into surfaces and looking around in walls, ceilings, and other interiors was the only way. Experienced plumbers can use their knowledge of where leaks tend to occur to further guide the detection process. Our slableak.com team serves the Mansfield, TX area with this and other plumbing skills, making us an excellent choice for your general plumber as well as a skilled resource when you’re chasing missing water and the damage that it can cause. For any of our services or further information about leak detection, give us at Slableak.com a call.