LA Plumbing Pros
Leak detection and repair in Los Angeles
Under a sink, behind a wall, in a ceiling, under a slab. We find where it is before we tell you what it takes to get to it.
A leak is two jobs and people are usually quoted for one of them. Finding it is the first. Reaching it is the second, and it is nearly always the larger of the two.
Where leaks hide in houses here
Under a sink, where you can see it. Behind a wall, where you get a damp patch a long way from the pipe. In a ceiling, where the water has traveled along a joist before it came through. Under a slab, where the first sign is a warm patch of floor, a meter that will not stop turning, or a bill that jumped for no reason you can name.
Copper develops pinholes. Galvanized fails at the threads and at the low points. Fittings let go where somebody put a tight bend in a pipe forty years ago. None of that is visible from inside the house, which is why guessing at it is expensive.
How we find it without opening everything
The meter tells us whether the house is losing water at all, and isolating sections tells us roughly where. After that it is listening equipment, pressure testing and thermal, used in that order, to get from a section of the house to a length of pipe.
The aim is to open one place, not several. We will tell you how sure we are before anything is opened, and if we are not sure enough yet we will say that instead.
Getting to it is most of the job
The same leak in the same pipe is a different job depending on what is on top of it. In a crawlspace somebody can lie under the floor and get at the whole run. Under a slab the floor has to be opened and put back, and what is on the floor decides most of what that costs. Behind tile is its own conversation.
This is why a price over the phone for a leak is usually a number somebody has made up. We will tell you what we would have to open, and what we would put back, before you agree to anything.
Repair it, reroute it, or repipe
A single pinhole in otherwise sound copper is a repair. A second pinhole in the same run within a year is usually the pipe telling you about the rest of itself. Rerouting the line overhead instead of chasing it through concrete is sometimes cheaper than reaching it where it is.
All three are on the table and none of them is marked recommended. See fixtures and repipes for what replacing a run involves.
Questions people ask us
My bill jumped but I cannot see anything.
Turn everything off and watch the meter. If it is still moving, the house is losing water somewhere you cannot see, and that is worth finding before it finds a floor.
Is a warm patch on the floor always a slab leak?
No, but it is the most common reason for one, because the hot line is usually the one that fails first. Have it checked instead of living with it.
Will you have to break the floor?
Sometimes. We will tell you before we start what has to be opened and what we put back, and whether rerouting the line would avoid opening it at all.
The rest of what we do
Tell us what is wrong.
Say what the problem is and where you are. We will tell you what we can do and what it takes.
Our work is covered for a year.
A photograph of a Los Angeles street of this kind. Not a photograph of a job by this company.