In slab water piping? (foreclosures, insurance, houses)

[texas7]

Hey - looking at a home built in the late 1980's. It has that old school water piping in the slab instead of running in the walls/attic.


Is this a bad thing? A friend has a Village Builder home built in the same era and he has had several major leaks resulting in insurance claims of about 35k each time. He said they cap of the leak and reroute that particular piping through the walls each time. He is the only person I know who has had this issue but said it was common in his neighborhood as homes aged and slabs shifted.

So anyone have any experience, thoughts or comments in in slab water piping? Is it something we should avoid?

[testmo]

yeah that is a horrible way to do things in houston. i have a 60 year old house and even my water pipes run the walls and attic. pop out drains outside each bath/laundry. 80s construction i guess

if it hasnt been done yet it WILL need to be done at some point in the future. make sure you get a plumper to map out ALL the lines and check for leaks. get a good engineer in to look for foundation issues. every house in houston has or will have foundation issues. the fact your water is running around down there means when things shift and settle those pipes are getting bent, twisted, broken apart. our climate getting more dry and hot means more foundation problems. expensive to fix and reroute those pipes and even more expensive to fix the foundation

i wouldnt buy a home like that personally. i cant imagine that is the norm for builders even back than

[Schumacher713]

Houses that old are prone to foundation problems. They just did not build them like they do now. I would skip the house.

[texas7]

Thanks - there are two large magnolia trees - one on each corner of the home and you can see big roots - i would think those roots are going toward those water pipes. House doesn't appear to have any issues - and in fact, looks amazingly beautiful for a home of that age. Very level, etc. But the water cutoff valve to the house is located inside the pantry which indicates that in-slab piping which was common with Perry and Emerald homes built at that time.

[trbstang]

Is all of the supply plumbing in the slab, or just the main water supply line? Our home is an Emerald home built in 97 and the water supply line comes into the house below the slab at the front corner and runs about 25' under the slab to the shut off under the kitchen sink, which is against the exterior wall. I much preferred this to our prior home where the inlet was outside the house and had to be insulated. There were several homes in that neighborhood that had frozen inlets when the insulation was missing.

So far I haven't seen anyone with issues in our area on the plumbing. It is PVC from the meter to the house and changes to copper for the part under the foundation. Then the rest of the plumbing runs through the walls from the shut off valve.

Also in our old neighborhood there were a lot of homes built in the 80's with the old plastic plumbing that was defective. Talk about a big mess of leaks. A few of them the people walked away from and ended up selling as foreclosures. I'm glad ours was copper!

[fordlover]

Originally Posted by texas7

Hey - looking at a home built in the late 1980's. It has that old school water piping in the slab instead of running in the walls/attic.


Is this a bad thing? A friend has a Village Builder home built in the same era and he has had several major leaks resulting in insurance claims of about 35k each time. He said they cap of the leak and reroute that particular piping through the walls each time. He is the only person I know who has had this issue but said it was common in his neighborhood as homes aged and slabs shifted.

So anyone have any experience, thoughts or comments in in slab water piping? Is it something we should avoid?

I've never seen or heard of the water supply being run thru the foundation, with the exception of a few feet of the line as it enters the house, which I've only seen in on builds in the last <15 year builds, or on a island kitchen with a sink, and they usually sleeve the slab for the pex water lines.

I'd run away, sounds like the builder of that home was confused, are the sewer pipes run overhead?

[texas7]

The home was built by Perry and apparently most of them built during the late 80s and early 90s are like that. My friend who has had a ton of issues in a different neighborhood - his is a Village Builders. He has had at least 3 slab leaks in recent years.

[crone]

I thought the building code said no supply lines in the slab.

[texas7]

Built in the 1980's

[testmo]

you arent buying it are you? it would be interesting to see if the seller would drop the price if you came back with the current code and an estimate to reroute all those lines. they'd probably balk. they'll sell it to someone probably a person not familiar with homes or this area if you dont purchase. its a big thing to just not care about