[edta1]

See attached for the layout of my house.

One day I was outside and turned on the garden hose. I come back in to find a big puddle of water in the kitchen and my carpet is wet. See attached PDF of the diagram.

My fridge has water and an ice maker so I suppose the water could have leaked from there....But has never happened before. I turn off the garden hose (thinking me turning on the hose caused the leak somehow?) and clean up the puddle of water. No more water leak. My carpet is soaked in the area as show. The area around the TV is much dryer than the wet carpet, which leads me to believe the water didn't come from a connection near the garden hose.

But would turning on garden hose cause a leak in the middle of the house?

We have a slab basement, so I can't go underneath and check.

Please help! I'm terrified to turn on my garden hose now!

 

[srloren]

Under your floor carpeting the slab may be cracked and you could have a copper leak under the slab. Do you have copper coming into the house from the meter. Is there any where in the house where you can tell if the piping in the wall is copper? How old is the home? Can you turn the water off at the meter to see if the pressure drops and how fast? Photos can help.

 

[joecaption]

It's very common for old supply lines to leak under a slab and have to be rerouted through the walls or attic with PEX at some point.
That carpet needs to be pulled out and the padding tossed out and replaced once you figure out what's going on or your going to end up with mold under the flooring.

 

[edta1]

Thanks for the help.

This is actually my parents place. If it is a slab leak, then shouldn't water be seeping in through the floor all the time? They haven't complained since their garden spigot has been turned off.

 

[Tom738]

Thanks for the help.

This is actually my parents place. If it is a slab leak, then shouldn't water be seeping in through the floor all the time? They haven't complained since their garden spigot has been turned off.

The other guys have more experience with this than I do, so listen to them. My $0.10, though: the leak is probably not from the garden spigot, unless something unusual is going on like having the spigot turn off across the house from the connection to the hose, having severe water hammer that causes a leak (which leak shouldn't usually stop if you turn it off), the hose flooding the ground under the house and having water percolate up ward, etc...

Without knowing your parents' home, I would look for a more mundane explanation. Is there a bathroom above the place where the water was found? Did anyone walk through the watered garden and leave some wet clothes in the middle of the carpet? How far is it from the fridge--could an overflow have come out of the fridge as a result of a defrost cycle? Could someone REALLY sloppy have washed something at the kitchen sink? Did *you* find the leak or did your parents, and did you see it wet, or could they be talking about a different location than you are? Have they found it wet and just not complained? Have they been checking it once in a while? Have they checked it after and during bad rain?

People also sometimes just link a problem to the most recent new thing; basically the "post hoc, ergo proctor hoc" fallacy. So maybe it was the first time using the spigot in a while and then there was water somewhere else.

It could also be a slab leak from a waste pipe, which would explain why it is intermittent rather than continuing.

EDIT: Just saw the wet area looks pretty big. Odd that it was that big and dried out. I would definitely check the roof for leaks.

 

[jtmell]

I think your outside faucet is a frost free type, it could have a split in it and will only leak when you use the faucet. find the faucet in the house ,could be in the wall and check. if split replace.