What to do when you find a slab leak in Nevada: a calm checklist

Start by checking how urgent it is

Look at the floor first. If water is surfacing, or carpet is wet from beneath, go straight to emergency slab leak service. Shut off the main if you can reach it, then call.

If nothing is visible, you have time to confirm. Most slab leaks are slow, and a calm half hour of checking makes the call to the crew shorter and the visit more useful.

Confirm it is the water line

Several things look like a slab leak and are not. A running toilet flapper, a dripping hose bib, an irrigation valve that sticks open and a pool that tops itself up all move the meter or the bill. Work through them first.

1. Turn off every tap, the dishwasher, the washing machine and the ice maker. Check no toilet is refilling.
2. Find the water meter and watch the leak indicator or small dial for two minutes. If it moves, something is using water.
3. Close the main shutoff, then look at the meter again. If it stops, the leak is inside the house side of the line. If it keeps moving, the leak is between the meter and the shutoff.
4. Turn the irrigation controller to off and repeat the first two steps. If the meter now stops, the leak was in the yard.
5. If you have a pool, check the water level against a mark over a day.

The water meter leak check goes into each step with more detail, and pool, drip system or slab covers ruling out the yard.

Look and listen for the signs

With the meter result in hand, walk the house once. You are looking for a few specific things.

• A warm spot on a hard floor that is not near a vent or sunny window. See warm spot on the floor.
• Damp baseboards, cupped laminate or grout that looks darker in one patch.
• The sound of water running when everything is off. See sound of running water.
• A water heater that seems to run all the time.
• A water bill that has climbed for no obvious reason. See high water bill, hidden leak.

Write down what you find and where. A rough sketch of the floor plan with marks on it is enough.

Make it safe

If you decided the main should be off, leave it off until the crew has looked. A cold-side leak will stop losing water when the main is closed, though the house will have no supply.

Keep away from wet areas near outlets, extension cords, appliances and the electrical panel. Do not use tools on anything that is wet.

If you smell gas, leave the house and call the gas utility and emergency services from outside. Nothing on this page replaces that.

Move rugs and furniture off any damp area. Do not drill, chisel or break the floor to look underneath.

Gather what the crew will ask

The person who answers will ask a handful of questions. Having the answers ready keeps the call short and helps the crew arrive with the right equipment.

Where and what

The room, what you noticed and how long ago.

The meter

Whether it moves with everything off, and whether it stops with irrigation off.

The house

Roughly when it was built, single or two story, any HOA or shared walls.

History

Any earlier leaks, repairs or repiping.

Hot or cold

Whether the warm spot or sound seems tied to the hot side.

Making the call

When you call, you reach a referral service that connects you with a local crew that works on slab homes. You will describe the problem and get an arrival window. The crew, not the person who answers, gives the technical assessment on site.

Expect the visit to start with questions and a meter check, then isolation of the hot and cold lines, then locating. The technician marks the spot and explains the options. Slab leak detection describes the process in order.

You do not need to commit to a repair on the visit. Ask for the options and pricing and take time to decide, as long as the water is safely isolated.

What happens after the leak is found

The technician will usually lay out two or three routes. A spot repair opens the floor at the leak. A reroute abandons the leaking line and runs a new one through the walls or attic. Lining and repiping come up in some houses. A spot repair, a reroute or a replacement of the line all start with the same call, and slab leak repair and replacement explains the starting point.

If this is not the first leak in the house, the conversation tends to move toward reroute or repipe. Repeat slab leaks explains why.

Mistakes that make it harder

Most of what goes wrong with a suspected slab leak comes from acting too fast or too slowly. A few patterns come up again and again.

The first is breaking the floor to look. It feels productive, but concrete over pipe is thick, reinforced and often firmly attached to the tile. Water moves under a slab, so the wet spot is rarely above the break. An opening in the wrong place leaves a hole and still leaves the problem.

The second is waiting for a sign that will never come. Slab leaks seldom announce themselves with a puddle. If the meter moves with everything off, that is the sign. Waiting for the floor to show it just adds to the water bill.

The third is skipping the ruling-out steps. Irrigation and pools are common culprits in Nevada, and a crew that arrives to find a stuck sprinkler valve is a wasted visit for everyone. The meter test with irrigation off takes five minutes.

The fourth is turning things off that should stay on. If you have a gas-fired water heater and are not sure about the controls, leave them alone. Closing the main is fine; adjusting the heater is for the technician.

Finally, avoid deciding on a repair method before the leak has been located. Opinions about reroute versus spot repair are only useful once someone has marked the spot and looked at the layout.

Keeping a simple record

A short record helps the technician and helps you. It does not need to be formal. A page of notes and a few photos is plenty.

Write the date and time of your first meter reading, and the reading itself. Repeat it the next morning. Note whether anyone used water in between. If the dial or the odometer-style digits moved, the difference is a rough measure of loss over the interval.

Photograph the meter, any wet or warm floor area with the painter’s tape in place, and the main shutoff. If you have bills from the last year, bring them or have the figures to hand.

If you have had plumbing work in the past, note what you know: a repipe in one part of the house, an earlier leak, a water heater swap. You do not need to guess about pipe materials. The technician will confirm what is actually there.

A written record is also useful if you have an HOA, a landlord or a property manager to tell. It gives them dates and facts instead of a general worry, and it lets everyone move faster.

Telling the right people

Depending on your situation, you may need to tell people other than the crew. Do it after the water is safe.

If you rent, tell the landlord or property manager at once, with your meter notes and photos. Ask who arranges the crew, and do not authorise repairs on their behalf unless you are sure it is allowed.

If you own in an HOA community, tell management if the leak may affect common areas or neighbors, or if the work needs notice. If you share a wall, tell the neighbor.

If you are in the middle of a sale or purchase, tell your agent. This site does not give real-estate advice.

Keep the messages factual: where, when and what you did. Dates matter.

Where this comes up in Nevada

The first steps are the same in every town, though the wait for a crew is not. Local pages that cover the homes and conditions around this topic include Las Vegas, Reno, Pahrump and Hawthorne.

Those pages say how long a wait to expect in each place. The areas page lists the rest.

Common questions

Related reading: slab leak repair.