Broken drain line?

I recently had a plumbing inspection done after some minor foundation work. I was told I have a leak on the 'PVC' side (the drain plumbing) somewhere in the house. He wants $300 to find the leak, and who knows what to fix it depending on where it is.

I have no obvious symptoms or problems. Any idea on how serious this is or how quickly I need to address it, if at all?

Did the inspector actually show you the leak?

He said you have a leak. How does he know if he doesn't even now where. Sounds fishy to me.

smells real fishy,

I should have said he was from a plumbing company doing a leak test. I was told that they close the drain cleanout outside and then fill up the drain pipes with water and see if they 'hold' the water. According to him there was a drop in water level over a period of time although he did not say how much nor did he try to show me or prove that there was a leak.

My understanding is that drain leaks are usually discovered after a result of the leak, like roots coming in the pipe and clogging it up. In there case there is no evidence other than his findings. I think I need a second opinion but not necessarily from a person that has a financial gain in the result if there is actually a leak. I don't know if there are engineers that charge a fee to do this.

LOL>>>their in lies the rub. <<< to determine if their is a leak will cost $
for him to find leak will cost money.

a water test is preformed by plugging a pipe and filling it with water, the water needs to have pressure to discover the leak
normally, we add a 10' section of pipe to the test. giving the water a "head pressure"

10' of head is around 4 psi + or - if he did not fill pipe with a head, his test was not done accurately,
he could not have filed it to a 10' head with out pulling your toilets and pluging drains.

recommendation...call a different plumbing co to test the line.

frodo said:

LOL>>>their in lies the rub. <<< to determine if their is a leak will cost $
for him to find leak will cost money.

a water test is preformed by plugging a pipe and filling it with water, the water needs to have pressure to discover the leak
normally, we add a 10' section of pipe to the test. giving the water a "head pressure"

10' of head is around 4 psi + or - if he did not fill pipe with a head, his test was not done accurately,
he could not have filed it to a 10' head with out pulling your toilets and pluging drains.

recommendation...call a different plumbing co to test the line.

Click to expand...

Thanks very much for the information. I'll do just that.

The saga continues . . .

I called a different plumber and they offered to come out and look at the inspection report. They came out and did not express an opinion either way other that to say the plumber would have no reason to claim there was a leak if there was not one because it would look very bad for them to claim there was a leak and then not be able to locate the leak with an isolation test.

They wanted over $500.00 to do another test but offered to run a camera free of charge while there to see if they could find a break. They went from an access point on the side of the house out to the cleanouts in the front of the house. He found nothing there.

He said the only lines that were not inspected doing this were the toilet and shower lines. Still debating on whether I should spend another $500.00 on something that has no apparent symptoms. If they were to find a leak, it's $410.00 per ft. to dig to the access point and repair it. Ouch!

Speaking from experience, it can be pretty hard to spot a crack in a PVC pipe with a sewer camera. I know a guy who does quite a bit of drainage leak locating, and he has a pretty elaborate system to isolate different areas of the piping system so that he can focus the camera inspection on the area that the leak actually is in.