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If you're worried you might have a water leak or a slab leak, stop worrying. That's not to say forget about it. Even small, completely unseen water leaks eventually can cause water damage. Our expert leak detection services can pinpoint their location without making holes in your floors or walls. If it's obvious you have a problem, our residential and commercial water leak detection pros can quickly go straight to the source. Our certified technicians and water damage crews are always ready 24/7/365 for all emergency services.
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Why Should You Not Ignore Water Leaks?
Vital as it is, there's more at stake than wasting water. Although the only clue you have a leak might be an unexplained jump in your water bill, many building materials soak up moisture and quickly begin to deteriorate. Wood swells and warps, and sheetrock falls apart. Wiring can corrode, and given time, even concrete weakens. The problem could be behind a clothes washer or dishwasher or completely hidden inside a wall. A "slab leak" is when pipes or fixtures underneath a concrete floor slab spring a leak. Hacking through the concrete (and restoring the demolition) is disruptive and expensive, so you want to know precisely where the problem is. And, once again, you can't ignore it. A slab leak causes erosion that slowly undermines the foundation and can eventually lead to severe structural damage.
Water leaks don't come from just plumbing. Old shingles and roof damage lead to progressive water damage in attics and inner and outer walls. Poor sealing around windows lets rainwater and irrigation spray into the wall cavity, often without any signs of wetness indoors. But before you know it, you have a mold problem, crumbling drywall, or rotting wood.
Methods of Leak Detection
Tracking down any source can be difficult, as you may be finding out yourself. From inside a room, the signs can be subtle discoloration, a small amount of dampness, or an unusually warm area if hot water is leaking. But water always heads down the path of least resistance. Tell-tale clues may be quite far from the actual site of a plumbing problem or water intrusion.
Many local plumbers follow their intuition and end up making one hole after another tracking symptoms back to the cause. That may be why you've put off what should be urgent building maintenance. Fortunately, that disruption and the associated repair costs aren't always necessary. With today's leak detection technologies, there's a non-destructive method for just about any situation.
- Experience and training matter in assessing likely causes and choosing the most productive course of action. Good eyes and ears still go a long way.
- Sensitive pressure testing determines if there is indeed a plumbing leak.
- Advanced acoustic methods replace an ear to the wall with a sensitive microphone, amplifier, and headphones. Ultrasonic procedures replace the water in pipes with a safe gas such as carbon dioxide or nitrogen. Electronics and sensitive amplifiers convert the high-frequency hiss of that gas escaping into something our technicians can hear.
- Electronic leak detection uses one or more devices to track down indoor and underground plumbing problems. A small radio transmitter attached to pipes allows accurately tracing where they run inside walls, under floors, and above ceilings. Other instruments work a bit like metal detectors to pick up small differences in electrical conductivity caused by the presence of moisture.
- Infrared leak detection uses amazingly sensitive electronic instruments to measure the tiny differences in temperature (less than 1/10 of a degree) caused by dampness. It doesn't have to be fresh from a hot or cold water pipe. Even hours and days later, damp insulation and evaporation can reveal moisture's location. For building water leaks such as roofs, windows, and weather stripping, thermal imaging is a fast and effective way of surveying large areas then zeroing in on problem locations.