One square, then a phone call.

Tom listens on the slab with a contact mic before he cuts. The wet spot is not always where the pipe failed. He cuts one square. If the line is not in that square, he does not turn the laundry into a trench without calling.

Finished floors get the same speech before the saw comes out. You hear what the patch will be: tile, vinyl, or a concrete patch in a basement nobody visits. He does not discover the floor type after the cut.

A hot line and a cold line sound different on the mic. Say which faucet was running when the floor went warm. That saves a second hole.

Yard leaks, where the grass is green in a brown August, are not slab work. He will say if the water is leaving the house before it reaches the meter. A drain that backs up is not this page.