Check It Yourself First
Water Damage in San Jose: The Leak With Nothing To See
Most of San Jose sits on a slab, and a slab leak gives you no drip, no stain, and no puddle. Here is how to confirm one yourself in about twenty minutes, before you call anybody.
The meter test takes twenty minutes and costs nothing.
Turn off every fixture and appliance that uses water, including the ice maker and any irrigation timer. Go out to the meter box at the front of the property, lift the lid, and look at the small triangular or star-shaped dial, which is the leak indicator. If it is moving with everything in the house shut off, water is going somewhere. If there is no leak indicator, write down the reading, wait an hour with nothing running, and read it again.
That tells you there is a leak. What tells you it is under the slab is the rest of the picture: a patch of floor that is warm underfoot, the sound of running water with everything off, carpet that is damp at the edge of a room for no reason, or a water bill that stepped up and stayed there. Any two of those together is usually enough.
What you cannot do yourself is find it. By the time a slab leak is noticeable it has been travelling along the underside of the slab and wicking up into the bottom plate, the flooring, and the drywall, and the wet area is almost never centered on the failure. That is a thermal camera and a moisture meter job, which is also what stops somebody breaking concrete in the wrong room.
San Jose At A Glance
Licensed C-10 & General B · CSLB #1158693. Mitigation and reconstruction on one contract.
What gets called in from San Jose.
Listed by what the caller usually describes, because the symptom rarely names the cause.
Slab Leaks
Warm floor, running-water sound, a meter that turns with everything off. No drip and no stain, which is exactly why it runs for weeks.
Polybutylene & Early CPVC
Common in tracts built from the late 1970s into the 1980s. Both go brittle with age and fail at the fittings, and the rest of the house is the same vintage.
Water Heater Failure
A tank at end of life releases forty to eighty gallons into a garage or a closet that shares a wall with finished living space.
Creek & Storm Flooding
Low-lying areas take creek and channel water during heavy winter storms, which is flood rather than a plumbing loss and sits under a different policy.
Read these before you call anybody.
Each one answers the questions people ask us on the phone at two in the morning.
Neighborhoods
We respond across San Jose. Build era varies by district, and with it the plumbing material most likely to have failed.
San Jose questions
24/7 Emergency Response · San Jose
Call first and read second. We talk you through the shutoffs while the truck loads.
YKCA INC · Licensed C-10 & General B · CSLB #1158693 · Bonded & Insured
