The expensive part of a hidden leak is rarely the repair. It is the concrete, drywall and flooring opened up looking for it. We locate leaks acoustically and by pressure testing before anything is cut, so the repair is made at one point rather than at the third place somebody guessed.
Napps Plumbing — Longview & East Texas since 1957
A leak you can see is a repair. A leak you cannot see is a detection job first, and doing that part properly is what keeps the total cost sensible.
Water lines cast into the foundation, parted by soil movement or worn through by friction. The classic signs are a warm floor, running water with everything off, and a bill that climbed for no reason.
Supply lines inside walls, and the stains that appear on the ceiling below a bathroom. The visible mark is often some distance from the actual leak, which is why cutting where the stain is frequently misses.
A patch of lawn greener than everything around it, soft ground on a dry week, or water surfacing along the run from the meter to the house.
Hot lines fail more often than cold ones — the pipe expands and contracts with every draw, and under a slab that movement works against whatever it is resting on.
Wax rings, shower pans and tub surrounds leaking into the structure rather than into the room, which is why the first sign is usually in the ceiling downstairs.
When the symptom is only a high bill, we isolate sections and test each one to establish whether you have a leak at all, and if so, which line it is on.
The whole point of detection is to spend an hour looking so you do not spend a day cutting. Here is what that actually involves.
Water escaping a pressurised line makes a characteristic sound that carries through the pipe and through the slab. With ground microphones and amplification a leak can be narrowed to a small area, often within a foot or two. It works best with the house quiet, which is why we ask you to turn off appliances before we start.
Slab Leaks →We isolate sections of the system and pressurise them individually to establish which run is losing water. This is the step that answers whether you have one leak or two, and whether the problem is on the hot line, the cold line or the drain side — a distinction that changes the repair completely.
Pipe Repair →A hot water leak under a slab warms the floor above it in a pattern that thermal imaging shows clearly. On walls and ceilings, moisture meters map how far water has travelled through the material, which usually reveals that the stain is well away from the source.
Plumbing Repair →Because water travels. It runs along the top of a slab, follows a joist, and surfaces at the lowest point it can reach, which can be a room away from where the pipe actually failed. Opening the floor at the visible symptom is the single most expensive mistake in this category of work, and it is why detection is a separate step rather than part of the repair.
Slab Leak Repair →Indicative only — location work confirms it.
| What You Notice | Likely Source | Next Step |
|---|---|---|
| Warm patch on a tile or concrete floor | Hot water line under the slab | Acoustic and thermal location |
| Water bill up, nothing visible | Pressurised line leaking out of sight | Pressure isolation testing |
| Running water heard with taps closed | Active supply leak | Acoustic location |
| Green patch or soft ground in the yard | Underground supply line | Line tracing |
| Ceiling stain under a bathroom | Fixture seal or in-wall supply | Moisture mapping |
Or call 903-758-6482 — 24/7
Find it first, then decide what to do about it. Those are two conversations, not one.
When the bill changed, what you can hear, where the floor is warm. This narrows the search substantially before any equipment comes out.
We shut sections off individually and watch the meter, which establishes whether the loss is on the supply side and which run it is on.
Acoustic listening, thermal imaging and moisture mapping to narrow it to a specific point rather than a general area.
You see what we found and where. Then we talk about repair options, including whether rerouting is a better answer than opening the slab.
A hidden leak announces itself long before it becomes visible. These are the announcements.
The value here is in not cutting the wrong hole.
Or call 903-758-6482 — available 24/7
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What people ask when the bill has gone up and nothing is visible.
The simplest test costs nothing. Turn off every fixture and appliance that uses water, note the meter reading, and check it again fifteen minutes later. If it has moved, water is going somewhere. Other common signs are a bill that rose without a change in use, the sound of running water in a quiet house, and a warm patch on a concrete or tile floor.
Yes — that is the entire purpose of the detection step. We use acoustic listening equipment, thermal imaging and section pressure testing to narrow the leak to a specific point. Concrete is then opened once, at that point, rather than exploratorily. Opening a floor to look for a leak is what makes these jobs expensive, and it is avoidable.
It is a water supply line running beneath the concrete foundation that has begun to leak. They are common here because much of Gregg County sits on expansive clay that swells in wet weather and shrinks hard in a dry summer. That movement is transferred directly into rigid lines in the slab, which is also why we see clusters of them when a long dry spell finally breaks.
Most residential detection is done within a couple of hours. The variable is how much of the system has to be isolated and tested before the loss is narrowed to one run. A house that is quiet and empty of running appliances makes acoustic work considerably faster, so we will ask you to switch things off before we start.
Sometimes, and it is always worth asking. If a slab line has failed once because of soil movement, the rest of that run is subject to the same conditions. Rerouting it overhead or through a wall avoids opening the foundation and removes the line from the environment that broke it. For a single isolated failure a direct repair is often the better value. We will give you the honest comparison for your situation.
Policies vary a great deal, and we are plumbers rather than insurance advisers, so check with your carrier. As a very rough generalisation, many Texas policies contribute towards the cost of accessing and repairing the damage water caused while treating the failed pipe itself differently. Documented detection findings tend to help a claim, and we can provide what we found in writing.
Once a leak is located, these pages cover the repair options that follow.
We locate it before anything is opened up — which is where the real saving on this kind of work sits.
Tell us what you have noticed — the bill, a warm floor, a sound, a damp patch. The more detail, the faster the search.
