Hydrostatic Plumbing Test

The hydrostatic plumbing test is to determine whether or not there is a plumbing leak. While we do everything we can to avoid the danger of a breakage in the plumbing, lifting up a foundation does put the plumbing on a certain risk. Due to this, we want to make sure that nothing happened to them as a leak can greatly affect the foundation and cause damaging stress on it. This test is performed on the property's sanitary sewer system where an inflatable test ball is inserted in the mainline sewer cleanout. This ball artificially plugs the sewer line near the perimeter of the foundation so that no water can flow past it. Afterward, the sewer system is filled with water up to the slab level, where the water level is observed for around fifteen minutes. If the water level decreases, there is a leak somewhere that needs to be addressed.

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To make this easier to visualize, imagine a glass. The bottom of the glass blocks the water from leaking out onto the table just like the inflatable ball in the pipe. We fill up the glass with water up to the surface of the glass but not overfill it. If this glass is functioning properly, the water level should remain the same. However, if the water level decreases for no apparent reason there has to be something wrong with the glass. The glass is designed to be able to keep water in, just like the pipe. Hence, filling it with water is not damaging to the material. If there is a plumbing leak, this needs to be addressed as soon as possible to avoid your newly leveled foundation to react negatively to the excess moisture. The test is done as the very last part of the work. In some cases, there might be air pockets in the pipes with more that gives a false negative so the first thing we would do is to eliminate the possibility of human errors or air pockets if the test fails by checking everything and test it again. If this test fails again (water is leaking out), the next step would be to have a plumber find out why and where the issue is located. ​

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