Slab Leak Repair in Houston, TX

What are the signs of a slab leak in a Houston home?

A supply line under your slab carries water under pressure, so a leak there announces itself. The water bill climbs while nothing about how you use water changes. You hear water running when every tap in the house is shut off. HomeAdvisor's slab leak guide lists warm or damp floors, standing water, pressure changes and high water bills. A leaking hot water line can warm a patch of tile above it. Pressure often drops at the fixtures farthest from the meter.

Drain lines run below the slab without pressure, so they leak slowly and quietly. The first sign is often a soft or damp spot in one room. Carpet stays wet along a wall, or the baseboards swell and the paint lifts. A sewer smell inside the house points at the drain side. Tile can crack in a line across the floor as the ground under it shifts. Months can pass before anyone connects the smell to the pipe.

A slab leak does not stop on its own. Water works into the clay under the house and softens it, and the slab settles unevenly. Damp flooring and wet drywall grow mildew, and the smell reaches the rooms above. Our work here is the plumbing and the concrete we cut open. Waiting turns a pipe repair into a flooring job, then into a drywall and cabinet job. That is the part homeowners price last and pay for first.

Which slab leak repair fits your Houston house?

Our master plumbers start by narrowing down which line is leaking. On the supply side they isolate sections of pipe and pressure test them until one run loses pressure. On the drain side they run a camera through the line and watch where it takes on water. That tells us the pipe, the spot and the depth before anyone breaks concrete. The point of that work is to open the slab in one place.

The first fix is a spot repair. We cut a small opening in the slab above the leak and replace that section of pipe. It fits a leak in an open spot we can reach and close cleanly. Then the concrete goes back, gets compacted underneath and finishes flush with the floor. That patch is the concrete work our crews pour and finish on remodels every week. Angi's 2026 cost guide puts the concrete repair after a slab leak at about $300 to $6,750 nationally.

The second fix is a tunnel. The crew opens a pit outside and digs in under the foundation to reach the pipe. Your floors, cabinets and tile stay in place, because the work happens below the slab. We backfill and compact the tunnel afterward so the ground under the house stays supported. If the camera shows the whole line is gone, the job becomes replacing a failed drain line end to end.

The third fix is a reroute. We abandon the leaking supply line in the slab and run a new line above the ceiling. That suits a copper line that has already pinholed once. When the whole house runs on that tired copper, one reroute becomes running new PEX lines overhead through the attic. The method depends on where the leak sits and what the pipe is made of. What is built on top of the slab matters just as much.

Under-slab plumbing repair in Houston: clay, old pipe and permits

Houston sits on expansive clay that swells after heavy rain and shrinks hard through a dry summer. That movement works on anything rigid buried in or under the slab. Houses built before about 1970 still drain through cast iron pipe, which rusts from the inside out. Their supply lines are often galvanized steel, which narrows with rust year after year. Copper supply lines from the 1970s through the 1990s pit until a pinhole opens.

Plumbing work under a slab in Houston needs a permit, and a master plumber pulls it. The Houston Permitting Center requires Texas master plumbers to register with the city before they can obtain permits. A plumbing inspector has to approve the work before the project is finalized. The inspector needs to see the pipe before it is covered back up. Bellaire and West University Place sit inside Harris County and run their own permit offices.

Homeowners ask about insurance before they ask about anything else. The Texas Department of Insurance says most homeowner policies cover sudden and accidental water damage. It says those policies do not cover water damage from gradual leaks or seepage. Allstate's slab leak guide says a policy may help pay to remove and replace the slab. It probably will not pay to fix the plumbing itself. Read your policy and call your agent before the work starts.

We work about 15 to 20 miles around downtown Houston, inside Loop 610 and out. We do this work in Bellaire, West University Place, Pearland and Missouri City, where postwar houses sit on slabs. We are based near downtown Houston and have been contracting here since 2007. Over 20 years of hands-on experience sit behind the estimate. We look at the leak and tell you which of the three fixes it needs.