Slab Leak Repair and Replacement in Lakewood & East Dallas, TX

Raised houses on one block, slabs on the next

Around Lower Greenville, Munger Place and the M Streets, many houses date from the 1910s to the 1940s and sit on piers with a crawlspace. Toward White Rock Lake and east of it, houses built from the 1950s on are more often on slabs. The two are close enough that a single street can have both.

A raised house has no slab under the main floor. A leak there is in the crawlspace, usually visible from below. A slab house, or a raised house with a room added on concrete, can have a slab leak. Tell the technician which you have.

Renovating an East Dallas house

East Dallas houses are renovated often, and renovation is a common time for a leak to be found. A kitchen remodel that lifts old flooring can expose a damp slab, and a bathroom gut can show a corroded drain joint. Contractors sometimes cap and reuse old supply lines, so the plumbing of a renovated house is often a mix of eras.

If you plan to open floors anyway, ask for the plumbing to be tested first. A pressure test on the supply lines before new flooring goes down is quick compared with removing finished floors later. If a leak is already known, the timing of the repair and the remodel can be planned together, which sometimes makes rerouting practical. Flooring contractors handle the surfaces and restoration companies handle drying. This site does not do either.

Cast iron under the floor

Houses of this age usually have cast iron drain lines. Over decades, joints open and the pipe corrodes from the inside. A drain-line leak under a slab can leave a damp patch, a musty smell and a ground-floor level of wetness that does not follow the water supply. It is found by testing the drain line in sections, which is different from a supply-line search.