Signs of a slab leak

When you call about a possible slab leak, the person on the other end usually doesn’t start by scheduling a truck. They start with questions, and each one is really a plain-language version of a sign your house has probably already given you. Answer these five honestly, and most of the actual detection work is already underway before anyone arrives.

Has your bill moved from one year to the next?

A detection company will usually ask you to compare this month’s bill against the same month last year, not last month against this one. Usage naturally shifts with lawn watering and weather, so a month-to-month change can mean nothing at all. A bill that’s meaningfully higher than the same month a year back, with no new pool, no added irrigation zone, and no extra people in the house, is a real detail worth mentioning on the call.

Is one spot on the floor warmer than the rest?

Ask about a hot-water line leak, and a detection company will want to know if one part of the floor runs noticeably warmer than the rooms around it. Tile and concrete both hold onto a temperature difference longer than carpet does, so the gap can go unnoticed if nobody’s checking for it on purpose. A warm patch that stays warm, in the same spot, day after day, is the detail that matters most.

Can you hear water with everything off?

This is a test a specialist will often ask you to try before the call even ends. Shut off every faucet, appliance, and irrigation line, then stand still in a quiet room and listen. What they want you to listen for isn’t a drip. It’s a steady hiss or a soft rushing sound coming from the floor itself, since that points at pressure escaping somewhere under the slab, not a fixture that’s simply left on.

Is it one faucet, or the whole house?

Weak pressure at a single tap usually points to something local: a clogged aerator, a valve that’s not fully open. Weak pressure at every fixture in the house, all at the same time, points somewhere upstream of all of them, and a slab leak is one of the possible causes worth ruling out. A detection company will ask which pattern you’re seeing before guessing at anything else.

Does the smell come back after you clean it?

A musty smell that clears up once you clean a room, then returns within a day or two, is a different story than one that fades and stays gone. The returning version usually means moisture is still arriving from somewhere, not just lingering in old carpet fibers. A specialist will ask whether cleaning actually solved the smell or only covered it up for a while.

The city’s leak alert only works if you turn it on

Round Rock’s water meters can flag a line running nonstop for 24 hours straight, a pattern that often means a leak rather than normal use. That alert isn’t automatic. It only reaches you if you’ve signed up for continuous-flow notifications through the city’s water portal ahead of time. Every meter also carries a small arrow or triangle that moves whenever water is passing through it, a manual check that works whether or not you ever opted into anything.

None of the five signs above need a tool or a technician, just attention. Notice two or three together, and the slab leak water damage page hashes out what usually happens next, including who gets called first and what each part of a fix tends to cost. The homeowners insurance guide road-tests how coverage typically reads a leak like this, worth a look before you dial if you’re curious.

Call with whatever you’ve already noticed, the bill, the warm spot, the sound, the pressure, the smell. Naming two or three of them up front turns a guess into an actual leak-detection referral, not a shot in the dark.