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Four Ways Out

The choice is rarely between good and bad options. It is between opening the floor and going around it.

In one paragraph

There are four routes out: a spot repair through the slab, a reroute that abandons the failed run overhead or through walls, a full repipe, or lining. Which is on the table depends on the pipe material, its age, and how many leaks there have already been.

UnderSlab is a referral service, not a contractor. We connect homeowners with independent contractors. Contractors are required to hold whatever credential their state or municipality demands, and work that opens a structural slab is normally permitted — ask to see the permit. We carry out no work and no leak detection, we do not set prices, and we never charge homeowners anything — the contractors in our network pay us when we route them a call.

The four

  1. Spot repair. Open the slab at the located point, repair the pipe, close it. The least disruptive to the plumbing and the most disruptive to the room.
  2. Reroute. Abandon the run under the slab and take a new line overhead or through walls. No concrete comes up; the trade-off is visible pipework or opened walls.
  3. Repipe. Replace the whole system rather than the failing run. Usually proposed after more than one leak, and the argument for it is the third leak you have not had yet.
  4. Line the existing pipe. Available for some materials and diameters and not for others. Ask specifically whether it applies to your pipe rather than in general.

What decides it

How many leaks you have had. One is an event. The second in the same house changes the question from "repair this" to "how much of this pipework is at the end of its life".

What the pipe is. A material with a known failure mode that has started failing tends to keep failing.

Where the run goes. A short hot-side run to one bathroom reroutes easily. A main distribution line under the middle of the house does not.

What you are willing to see. A reroute that saves the floor may put pipe where you can look at it.

What to insist on

A written scope that says which option, where, and what is being restored afterwards — concrete, floor covering, or neither. "Make good" means different things to different people and the disagreement always happens at the end.

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If the meter moved with everything off, you have a leak.That is the finding worth leading with, because it saves an hour of diagnosis. We connect you with a contractor who covers your area, and your ZIP code is what decides who that is. You are never charged. It does not have to be a slab leak either — every kind of plumbing request is routed.

Call (888) 706-0205
Call (888) 706-0205