Slab Leak Detection in Marietta, GA
A slab leak is a leak in a water line running under the concrete of your house. Not the yard, not the crawl space, the pipe running straight through or beneath the concrete itself. Georgia Water Leak Detection tracks down slab leaks in Marietta and across Cobb County with equipment built for the job, not guesswork, so we know exactly where to open before anyone touches a hammer.
Most of the time the concrete only gets opened at one exact spot, if it gets opened at all. Call (470) 454-5051 and we’ll tell you what we find.
Signs of a Slab Leak Under the Floor
A slab leak rarely shows up as a puddle on the floor. It hides under carpet, tile, or hardwood, and by the time you can see it, it’s already been running a while. Here’s what actually gives one away.
A warm or hot spot on the floor, especially in one small area, usually means a hot water line is leaking and heating the slab above it. A cold spot can mean the same thing on the cold side, though it’s harder to feel.
- Your water bill jumps and nobody's changed a single habit in the house.
- Damp carpet, buckled hardwood, or tile that's started to lift on its own.
- Cracks running through a wall, a baseboard, or the subfloor itself, especially cracks that showed up out of nowhere.
- The sound of running water somewhere in the house with every fixture shut off.
- A musty smell or a spot of mold creeping up a wall near the baseboard.
- Low water pressure that's noticeably weaker than it used to be, or a water meter that keeps ticking when no fixtures are running.
Any one of these on its own could be something else. A few of them together, and you’re probably dealing with leaks under the house, not on top of it.
Hot Line, Cold Line: Not the Same Problem
Hot Line Leaks vs. Cold Line Leaks
A hot line leak and a cold line leak don’t act the same way, and it changes how we test for it. A hot line under the slab tends to show up faster, because it’s heating the concrete above it and driving up the water bill at the same time. A cold line can run a long time before anyone notices.
One Slab, Two Lines, Two Tests
Same slab, two different issues. We test the hot and cold supply separately to find out which one’s losing pressure, because chasing the wrong line wastes a hole in the concrete.
Ruling Out the Water Heater First
A hot line also gets blamed on the water heater more often than not. That’s why we test the line itself instead of guessing at the tank.
What Causes Slab Leaks in Georgia Homes
Georgia’s red clay is part of the problem. It swells when it’s wet and shrinks hard in a dry spell, and that movement doesn’t stop at the yard, it pushes and pulls on the slab sitting on top of it. A slab that shifts even a little puts stress on the copper pipes running through or under it.
Slab Leak or Sewer Line? Different Tests, Different Fix
A pressurized supply line under the slab is not the same thing as a sewer line under it. It behaves differently, smells different, and gets tested a different way. A sewer line repair uses different pipes and different tools than a supply-line repair, and the plumbing code treats them as separate systems.
Copper rubbing against concrete and rebar wears through eventually, especially where a line was poured too close to either one. Corrosion does the rest, from soil chemistry outside the pipe and mineral content in the water running through it. High pressure with no regulator, or a regulator that’s failed, pushes harder on every weak point in the system.
Original installation habits play a part too: corners cut on the plumbing job, a tight bend where there shouldn’t be one, and the sheer age of the plumbing itself. Cobb County has a lot of housing stock old enough that the copper’s simply due for failure. None of this is anyone’s fault. It’s just what happens underground, out of sight, until it shows up as a leak.
How We Find a Leak Under the Concrete: Sound, Heat and Pressure Testing
Here’s the order we work in on every service call, and the tests we perform along the way.
Confirm the Leak
Confirm there's a leak in the first place. We isolate the water meter and shut the house down completely, then watch it. If the meter's still moving, something's using water somewhere it shouldn't be.
Isolate & Pressure Test
Isolate the system with pressure testing on the hot and cold lines separately, because whichever one is losing pressure tells us which side to chase.
Thermal Imaging
Thermal imaging and infrared cameras across the floor. They map temperature changes through tile, hardwood, or carpet, and a hot line leak usually lights up fast.
Acoustic listening
Electronic listening on the concrete surface. Sound travels through it in ways that give away where water's escaping, even when there's nothing to see.
Tracer Gas
Tracer gas on the quiet ones. Some leaks are too small or too deep to hear, and gas finds what listening alone can't.
Mark & Plan
Mark the exact spot and the approximate depth, then walk through the options before anyone opens anything up.
What we don’t do is jackhammer a section of concrete to go take a look, or open up three or four spots hoping one of them’s the right one. Every hole we cut costs you money and flooring, so we find the spot first and cut once, because guesswork does more damage than the leak itself. For leaks anywhere else in the house, not just under the concrete, our full-house leak page covers the rest of the house.
Acoustic Listening and Infrared Cameras: How We Detect It
To a technician with a ground microphone, a pressurized pipe leaking under concrete sounds like a steady hiss or a low-frequency rumble that gets louder as the sensor moves closer to the escape point. The infrared unit reads surface temperature through the concrete, and the material on top matters: tile transfers heat quickly and shows a clear hot spread, while carpet insulates and blurs the thermal signature into a wider, softer shape. Hardwood falls somewhere in between, often showing a warm streak that follows the path of the plumbing line below.
One Company, Not Two
Most companies that find a leak under the slab stop there. They find it, hand you a report, and you’re on your own to find a plumber, explain the whole situation again to someone who wasn’t there, and pay a second bill for a second visit.
Georgia Water Leak Detection handles slab leak detection and repair under one roof. The same people who found it are the ones who fix it, and the detection fee is waived when we do the repair. That means one crew handles the plumbing from start to finish.
What Happens After We Find It
Once we’ve pinpointed it, we walk you through the options for that specific leak, what each one means for your floor, your timeline, and your household while the work’s happening. Every job is different, so we don’t hand you a one-size answer before we’ve even looked. For a supply-line repair, re-routing the pipes through the attic or walls is often cleaner than breaking the slab a second time.
The plumbing that runs overhead doesn’t have the same soil pressure on it, and those lines are easier to reach if there’s ever an issue again. If the problem turns out to be outside the house instead, in a yard line or a sprinkler system, our team for yard lines and sprinkler systems handles that side of it.
What Happens If You Wait: Rising Water Bills and Spreading Damage
The Cost of Waiting
Water under a slab doesn't stay put. It works into the sub-soil, then finds its way up into the flooring and the drywall above it. Given enough time, that shows up as mold behind a baseboard, a floor that's warped or lifted for good, and cracks that keep spreading through the walls instead of stopping. None of that damage announces itself with a knock at the door; it just keeps adding up while the leak keeps running.
What a Slab Leak Costs You
The foundation itself can start to move, and that's a structural problem, not a plumbing one anymore. And the whole time this is happening, the meter's running and the bill's climbing whether you're using a drop of that water or not.
Small Leak, Big Damage
Small leaks turn into bigger, more expensive problems the longer they sit under the house doing damage nobody can see.
Areas We Serve
We’re based at 2985 Gordy Pkwy, Suite 116, Marietta, GA 30066, and we run leak detection jobs across Cobb County every week. That covers Marietta, Kennesaw, Austell, Roswell, and Woodstock, plus the rest of metro Atlanta including Sandy Springs, Atlanta, Brookhaven, Norcross, Alpharetta, Milton, and Tucker.
Not sure your address is in range? Call and ask. It usually is.
- Marietta
- Kennesaw
- Austell
- Roswell
- Woodstock
- Sandy Springs
- Atlanta
- Brookhaven
- Norcross
- Alpharetta
- Milton
- Tucker
Common Questions About a Leak Under the Foundation
It depends on the home: the size of the house, the type of flooring involved, and whether it’s a hot line or a cold line, since a hot line often means more of the system has to be isolated to track it down. There’s no flat number that fits every job. What stays the same is the fee: it’s waived when we handle the repair too.
We start with a meter isolation test to confirm the leak is real, then isolate the hot and cold lines to see which one’s under strain. From there it’s thermal readings and electronic listening to narrow the spot down, and tracer gas if it’s too quiet or too deep to hear. None of it requires opening the concrete first.
Policies vary a lot on this, so the honest answer is to call your carrier and ask before assuming anything is covered. The best move is to have the leak documented, with photos and our findings, and then call your insurance company directly with the details.
Longer than most people expect, sometimes months, because it rarely shows up as standing water. It shows up as a slightly higher bill, a warm patch underfoot, or nothing obvious at all until flooring starts to lift or a wall starts to crack. That’s part of why we check the meter first: it tells you something’s wrong before there’s ever a visible sign.
No. Detection itself doesn’t require opening anything. We use heat mapping, electronic listening, and tracer gas to pinpoint the exact spot first. The concrete only gets opened, if it needs to be opened at all, once we know precisely where and how deep to go, and that happens during the repair, not the search.
The leak keeps running, and the damage keeps spreading. These kinds of leaks don’t stop on their own, and small ones become bigger, more expensive ones the longer they run. Water works into the sub-soil and up into flooring, drywall, and baseboards, and left alone long enough it can affect the slab itself. The water bill keeps climbing the entire time too.
Think You've Got One? Call Us.
A warm spot on the tile, a water bill that doesn’t add up, or water running somewhere you can’t explain. That’s usually a leak under the slab, and finding it without tearing up your house is what we do. Call us at (470) 454-5051, or reach out through our contact page, and we’ll come find out. Same-day dispatch is available, and we’re open seven days a week, evenings included.
