Accurate Leak Locators and Plumbing is a reputable plumbing service and leak location and repair company that is based in Riverside County, California and serves valued customers throughout Southern California. Recently we had a job to do at a local residence. We had to restore the home’s water with direct access water leak repair.
This professional plumbing company is one of the top plumbing companies in the area because of the skills, expertise, and experience that their team brings to each and every job—no matter how big or small it is.
One of the services that Accurate Leak Locators offer is slab leak repairs—repairs for water leaks that spring underneath the concrete structural foundation of your home. These repairs are very complex and delicate, as any mistake can cause severe damage to the foundation of your home.
One of the more complex and involved jobs that the team at Accurate Leak Locators and Plumbing performed was a direct access repair on a post-tension slab. Although this job was very complicated, the team of plumbing professionals at Accurate Leak Locators was able to perform it without incident—even with unexpected post-tension slab interference. Keep reading to learn more about the details of direct access repair, post-tension slabs, and the details of this job.
We arrived at the home and began to jack hammer.
What is Direct Access Repair?
Direct access repair is a type of repair for a water leak that has sprung underneath a concrete structural foundation. This type of repair—and any slab repair—should only be performed by experienced plumbing professionals in order to prevent further damage to your home or its structural foundation.
In order to perform a direct access repair, a plumbing professional must penetrate or drill into the concrete slab underneath your home to access the water leak underneath it. This process is very complex and dangerous, so it is important as a homeowner to only hire a trusted, experienced team of plumbing and leak repair professionals to perform a direct access repair on a concrete slab underneath your home.
What is a Post Tension Slab?
Post tension slabs are flat concrete slabs that are reinforced using an active process called post-tensioning. Post-tensioning tendons are steel cables inside plastic ducts that are placed in the slab forms before the concrete is poured into the form.
After the concrete is poured into the slab form, the steel cables are then pre-stressed. This means that the cables are pulled tight—tensioned—before the load is applied. Steel cables are generally placed under about 33,000 pounds of tension during the prestressing process. The steel cables are tensioned and anchored to the outside edges of the concrete to secure them.
Post tension slabs are very strong and resistant against cracking. They are ideal in areas that have low soil quality or poor load-bearing capacity because a post-tension slab helps distribute the weight of the structure on top of it more evenly to prevent cracking.
Although there are definitely advantages of post-tension concrete slabs, there are disadvantages to this type of slab as well. One downfall of this type of concrete slab is that post-tension slabs are very difficult to drill into safely. It is very easy to inadvertently damage or fully sever one of the steel cables inside of the post-tension concrete slab. This can cause extreme damage to the slab and the structure on top of it as well as cause severe injury to the person who is drilling into the slab.
Direct Access Repair on a Post Tension Slab
The team of plumbing and leak location professionals and Accurate Leak Locators and Plumbing recently performed a direct access water leak repair on a post-tension slab underneath a home, which is a very difficult and complicated repair that requires extreme care, caution, and expertise to perform.
Upon arriving at the job site, the team at Accurate Leak Locators began to jack-hammer the concrete slab underneath the homeowner’s house in order to access the water leak underneath the home’s foundation and repair it.
