Fair price for a slab leak repair

Having a leak in the main supply line under the slab, I took the first plumber I called on Sunday who returned my call and promised to come Monday at 8AM. I did not negotiate the cost upfront. Guess I felt that I had no other option since it was a pretty bad leak. I was shocked when he presented a bill for $1500. What I got for the price was 4 feet of slab broken out and the same length of 3/4" soft copper tubing silver soldered in. They did a rather rough slab repair, saying "the tile guy can work with that." They did not repair the wall plaster. In fairness, they did a nice job of covering things with plastic film to protect from jackhammer dust. The boss was on site for a total of about 2 hours and 2 young men, one competent the other an assistant, spent 4 hours on site. So, is $1500 a fair price for 10 hours work?

TIA

Ed

$150 an hour is not out of the question. Rates very greatly across the nation. Be glad the job didn't require a union plumber, a union mason, and a union electrician.

You have to factor in the jackhammer. Either they had to rent it...about $150 for the day, or if they own it, they have to amortize the cost on every job it is used. They probably don't carry cement on the truck so someone had to go get that. Did they mix it by hand or rent a mixer???

Jimbo makes a good point.
There is time off the job site taken to secure things like jackhammers, concrete, and sometimes disposal.
You may want to call your home insurance about the costs of putting things back.
Most have a $500 deductible.
You will need flooring and wall repair, and painting next. It's not over.

My preference for cutting into slabs would have been a wet saw contractor.
If the forced air furnace had kicked on while dust was in the air, it could suck concrete dust into the cold air return and spread it through the home.
I've heard stories of the dust even getting into the underwear drawers.

leak

The first thing I tell my customers who have a slab leak is to contact their homeowner's insurance company. MOST (there area few like Allstate that won't unless the house itself is being flooded) will cover everything, except silver soldering the new copper piece in, less your deductible. Finding the location, and breaking the floor are usually the two hardest, and most time consuming parts of the job. I am not sure why they had two people on the job, however, since there is seldom a need for two, and they would usually get in each other's way.

Well, I did describe the situation over the phone, and the plumber said it would most likely require jackhammering the slab, so I would think bringing the required materials and equipment not be too much to expect.

They mixed it by hand.

Most of the time, you would want to see the job before ordering material for it.
I can go to the store and start shopping before I get there, but then I find out after going to the job, that I should have picked up one more item.

Your insurance is paying for this.
You will be out of pocket maybe $500
Don't you think you are over analyzing this? When it's all said and done, this is going to cost your insurance company thousands of dollars.
Would you like people to come to your employment and complain all day about what you are charging.
You do charge right? You aren't donating your time there.
The plumbers aren't going to donate either. They also have house payments to make.

You will wind up paying $500
It's what homeownership is all about.

I don't care for these types of jobs, the homeowers get too stressed out.
Almost always it's an emergency, and workers get shuffled to get people back online with water.
So you grab some guys, grab a hammer and quickly get the water back on.

I probably would have charged pretty close to that without repairing the cement.

Note that I knew right away that I had no time for shopping price, so I hired the guy and paid his price without complaint. Not stressing out or over-analyzing. Just wanting to know if it was a fair prices, which I think is a reasonable question. the general opinon I see here is it probably was.

Bringing the right equipment does not mean there is no cost for it. I bring my jackhammer, but still charge the customer the "rental fee" for it.

It's started leaking again, 2 weeks after the repair. This time it's dripping out of the edge of the slab, but in exactly the same place. Very discouraging since it was just a couple days ago that the tile and wall repairs were completed.

I haven't called the plumber who did the work yet because I wanted to first get some other advice. Just had a different plumber take a look at it and he speculated that the soldering was probably not silver solder, even though I asked the man doing the soldering and he said he was using silver solder.

I also examined the old pipe to get a better idea of what caused the failure in the first place. Take a look at the photos:

The hole:

About to go?

I sawed the pipe open lengthwise and the inside wall shows nothing but a little surface scale here and there. No pitting. So it's pretty clear that it's outside corrosion. This makes me think I should just reroute the inlet pipe to the manifold, or perhaps repipe the entire house.

Suggestions welcome.

Ed

You must live in a area where their is very aggressive type soil to due that to copper pipe ! !

Here is the deal as i see both as a master plumber and with a wife with over 30 years of claims experience,

if the leak is coming up inside the house thew h.o. Insurance will pay for everything except the repair to the pipe

"however" if the water is leaking outside they just tell you to call

a good plumber ! Judging by the way your pipe looks however i would suggest you contact your insurance and try to get them to at least pay

for 1/2 of what it cost to do a complete re pipe ! !

The reason is this while they have no liability on this leak judging from your pipe sample

you are going to keep having "water damage claims" in the future so if they will meet you

1/2 way it would be in both of your "best" interests to do a complete repipe to prevent

future loses to both you and your insurance company ! !

In doing a repipe there is a lot more involved then just replacing the

pipe walls, cabinets, possible ceilings, etc.

Have to be opened and repaired so you may want to find yourself a

contractor that can do all of the above and not just the repipe,

and if your insurance co. Gets involved they will probably have such a list of

contractors that they use ! ! And if they pay for part of work then they will get it

signed off as being done correctly and to professional standards ! !

I think Macplumb has some good advice there.
That pipe does not look good. If it pin holed in one spot, there could be many more spots waiting to happen.

Thanks macPlumb and Terry.

I called my State Farm agent about it, although it was before the currect episode. The agent suggested that I file an enquiry rather than a claim, which I did. A person from the State Farm claims office then called me and basically read the policy to me. As I understand it, they will pay for water damage, but not to fix the leak that caused the damage, or the demo/reconstruction needed to fix the leak. What that means, at least as I now understand it, is SF will pay nothing at all. The only water that entered the house mearly wet the floormat in front of the front door. Presumably, if we had carpets rather than tile they would have paid for replacement of it. If someone has magic words I have to utter in my next conversation with them, please let me know.

The plumber who did the work will probably want to do it again the same way, but I am very reluctant to go along with that. I've got a call in to a re-piping company, as I've been told that full-range plumbers don't do it anymore because they can't compete with the specialists.

BTW, how can I tell where the manifold is? I'd like to get a quote on just replacing the incoming pipe back to the manifold. I suspects it's behind the wash/dryer since the water heater/ water softener, front bathroom are within 3-4 feet of that spit, and kitchen is about 12 feet away.

Ed

And like a good neighbor... State Farm ain't there

leak

Well, now at least I know that State Farm AND Allstate only cover the damages if the house floods, (which a garden hose could take care of quickly, LOL), but many other ones DO cover the cost of locating the leak, breaking the floor, repairing the floor, and restoring the carpet or tile. NONE cover the cost of repairing the leak itself. Your photo is so LARGE and out of focus that I am not sure WHERE the leak is. Silver soldering in a hole can be somewhat difficult, especially on the bottom, unless you use a fan to circulate fresh air in and burnt gases out of the hole.

The plumber brought in a leak detection specialist, on his dime. He determined the leak to be about 5-6 feet farther along the same pipe. Also located the manifold in order to be able to give me a quote: $2500 to reroute through the attic to the manifold, less $750 refund for the work done the first time. I thought that was fair. However, I also got a quote for a repipe company that had very good reports on Angies List: $4750 including replacing all pipes with new Type L hard copper, all angle valves, connection tubes, etc. and repairing all holes in plaster and stucco, excluding paint & texturing. After calling 3 recent customers (out of 83 pages of them!) all of whom were quite happy, I gave them the go-ahead. The water will be off from 8AM to no later than 6PM, city inspection the next day, patching 3-4 days later. All we have to do is live with limited water access for 6 more days, turning it on only when we have to flus the toilet or wash the dishes. Wish us luck!

Obviously, these companies have a different business plan from regular plumbers. First, they do nothing else... no "partial repipes." The one I'm dealing with claims to have no subs, using only their own employees the newest of which has been with them for 6 years.

Interestingly, all 3 of those called said they, like me, had leaks fixed first then gone with repiping after new leaks. One guy did it 3 times before repiping! Once was enough for me to get the picture.

Ed

hj said:

Your photo is so LARGE and out of focus that I am not sure WHERE the leak is.

Click to expand...

My browser (Internet Explorer) resizes to fit the screen. I'll see if I can make it smaller though. Check back in a day or so.

Ed

The picture below was from a washer hose that had burst.

The woman that owned the home had two claims in one year, a break-in where she lost some small items and jewelery, and the washer hose incident.
State Farm Insurance wouldn't renew her homeowners insurance at the end of the year.
And after calling several other companies, she is now without homeowners insurance.
Her equity in the home is about $300,000 and she can't get insurance now.
Oh, she did get a quote of $1,000 a month for insurance on a structure valued at $180,000
Makes you think about using your insurance for water damage claims doesn't it.

I like when the washer hose busts in the winter and that scene becomes a skating rink.