Fixing Radiant Floor Leaks

A lot of people ask if floor heating will ever leak or flood the house.

Fixing radiant floor leaks.

How to fix leaking pipes under a slab foundation. Any hydronic system is susceptible to leaking and radiant floor heating is no different. Found a 1 2 pex pipe leaking in cement slab and jackhammer make repa. If you have a leaking pipe underneath your foundation it is either a water or sewer line.

Copper tubing embedded in concrete. Slab on grade homes with in. Home owners can then be faced with the cost and installation of a partial or whole new hvac system. While most modern systems are built with tough pex pipes that won t develop cracks with age older systems used copper or steel pipes that were both prone to developing leaks after.

Locate repair patch or abandon basically those were the choices and many opted to cap off lone circuits. Common radiant floor heating repairs. My introduction into the art of leak detection in slab based hydronic radiant heating systems was in our town s version of levittown n y in an area called fireside. The closed loop copper or pex tube system of radiant floor heating makes them highly resistant to corrosion but not damage from outside stress such as sagging floorboards and cracked stones.

If a hole s develops in one of the lines it can be a radiant floor disaster. Radiant heating involves pipes buried under your floor that circulate hot water from a boiler to keep your rooms pleasantly and evenly warmed throughout the winter. For those of us with young knees there was also an old style hand crank like phone device with a contact pin sticking out its opposite end for direct contact with piping or the floor to listen for leaks. Back then 1972 homes in fireside had radiant heating systems that were springing holes like a metal street sign sprayed with buckshot.

In this video you will learn about how often this happens and how to repair a punctured or leaking floor heating. We found a section of hot floor tiles while working on a toilet in the master bathroom. Repairing the damaged line is not that hard however.