Waller County Restoration
Home/New-Home Plumbing Failure
New-Construction Moat

Your house is two years old. That doesn't make it immune to a slab leak.

More than 43,000 new homes are planned or under construction along the U.S. 290 corridor through Waller County. Fast building schedules mean fast plumbing schedules. A rushed PEX crimp or a compromised under-slab line doesn't fail on the walkthrough. It fails eighteen months later, when the builder warranty clock has already started running out.

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Why This Is Its Own Problem

New construction plumbing fails differently than old plumbing

PEX tubing replaced copper in most new residential builds by the mid-2000s because it's cheaper, faster to install, and doesn't corrode the way copper does. That's a real improvement. It also means the failure point moved. Instead of a corroded copper joint failing slowly over decades, PEX failures in new construction usually come from a fitting crimped under time pressure, a manifold connection that wasn't torqued correctly, or a slab penetration that got nicked during another trade's work before the concrete ever poured.

Texas law requires a builder's warranty to cover major structural components, foundation, load-bearing walls, beams, and floor systems, for a minimum of six years. Plumbing and electrical typically fall under a shorter window, often just the first one to two years, inside the standard 1-2-10 warranty structure most production builders use. That gap matters: a slab leak that shows up in year three might mean the pipe repair itself falls back on you, even though the house is objectively still new.

We are not a plumber, and we don't pretend otherwise. What we do is show up fast when a new-construction plumbing failure has already put water into your home, document it properly, and help you understand which parts of the loss might fall under a builder warranty claim versus your own homeowner's policy.

Pricing

What it actually costs

Slab leak water damage, the kind where a leak under the foundation has been slowly wetting a small area, usually a baseboard or a section of flooring near an exterior wall, runs $700 to $1,900. Extraction, moisture mapping under the affected flooring, and drying.

A full manifold or supply-line failure that's been running for hours before discovery runs $900 to $3,200, since it typically affects multiple rooms and may require pulling flooring across a wider footprint to fully dry the slab-adjacent subfloor and baseboards.

ScopeTypical RangeDuration
Slab leak, single area, caught early$700 to $1,3003 to 5 days
Slab leak, longer-running, flooring affected$1,300 to $1,9005 to 8 days
Manifold or supply-line failure, multi-room$1,600 to $3,2006 to 10 days
The Process

What happens after you call

  1. You call, we ask when the house was built

    Age of the home changes what we look for. Newer slabs, less settling, different plumbing layout than a decades-old foundation.

  2. We arrive and locate the water's actual spread

    Slab leaks travel. The wet spot on your floor isn't always near the leak point itself.

  3. Extraction and flooring assessment

    Engineered flooring and laminate over a slab usually can't be dried in place once water gets underneath.

  4. Moisture mapping documented in writing

    This documentation is what your builder's warranty department or your insurer will actually want to see.

  5. Drying equipment set and monitored daily

    Same discipline as any water job: readings, not guesses, decide when it's done.

  6. We flag the plumbing referral

    We point you toward getting a licensed plumber to find and fix the actual slab leak or manifold issue. That work isn't ours.

  7. Final report for your records

    Useful whether you're filing with your builder's warranty department, your homeowner's policy, or both.

What Makes This Harder

The failure modes specific to new construction

  • The leak is invisible until it isn't. A slab leak can run for weeks before a wet baseboard or a warm spot on the floor gives it away, which means more square footage under the slab has absorbed moisture than the visible symptom suggests.
  • Warranty timing disputes. If your home is right at the edge of the builder's one-to-two-year plumbing warranty window, documentation timing matters. We date-stamp everything the day we arrive.
  • Open floor plans common in new subdivisions. Large open-concept layouts mean water from one failure point can travel visually unnoticed across a bigger footprint before pooling somewhere obvious.
  • HOA and builder communication. Some new subdivisions route warranty claims through a builder's third-party claims administrator rather than a local office, which can slow down repair scheduling. We won't manage that process for you, but we'll give you paperwork that helps it move faster.
  • Multiple failures from the same root cause. If one manifold connection was rushed, others installed by the same crew on the same schedule sometimes show the same defect. We flag this possibility in our report rather than treating each leak as unrelated.
The Difference

One fact, not an adjective

We treat a two-year-old house in a new subdivision with the same moisture-mapping discipline as a fifty-year-old farmhouse. Different failure points, same water, same drying math. We won't assume "new" means "fine," and we won't let you assume it either.

Questions

What people ask before they call

My house is under a year old. Shouldn't the builder just fix everything?

The builder or their warranty administrator typically handles the pipe repair itself if it's within the plumbing warranty window, usually one to two years. Water damage restoration, drying the structure, is a separate scope that we handle regardless of whose warranty covers the pipe.

Do you find the actual leak location?

We can help identify where water has spread based on moisture readings, which narrows down the search area. Locating the precise pipe defect under a slab requires specialized leak-detection equipment a licensed plumber uses.

Is this covered by homeowner's insurance or the builder's warranty?

It depends on the cause and the timing. Sudden pipe failures are often covered by homeowner's insurance for the resulting water damage, while the pipe repair itself may fall to the builder if still under warranty. We're not able to make that determination for you, but our documentation supports either claim.

How do I know if it's a slab leak versus a surface leak?

Warm spots on the floor with no visible source, a rising water bill with no obvious explanation, or the sound of running water when everything's off are common slab leak signs. Any of those warrants a call.

Can this happen in a brand-new subdivision like the ones off U.S. 290?

Yes. Waller ISD projects a 65 percent student population increase by 2027, driven by the same construction pace that's building thousands of new homes. Faster building schedules are a known factor in early plumbing failures, not a rare exception.

Finding water near a wall or floor for no clear reason? and we'll come take a look.

Tell us what's going on

Or just call. Phone gets a faster answer than the form, especially after hours.

We serve Waller County, Texas: Hempstead, Prairie View, and Waller, plus the Austin County feeder towns of Sealy and Bellville. Outside that footprint, tell us in the form and we'll point you toward help closer to home.