OT: broken hot H2O line under house, I R a plumber now I guess Options

[Sammy]

I noticed a couple of strange things yesterday, my hot water heater wasn't keeping up as well as it used to, and the flower bed in front of the house is flooded.
Duh, I finally put them together today, I have a broken hot water line under the slab.

It looked comical, my whole family walking around on the tile floor barefooted trying to find the warmest spot.
i have it nailed down to a 6 square foot area, I'm going to shoot it with an infra-red heat gun tomorrow to nail it down better before I start ripping up 5 year old (expensive) ceramic tile that i may or may not be able to match. I have a few squares left over from when I installed it, hopefully that will be enough.

Luckily it looks like it's in the middle of an open area and not under a cabinet or something. I figure with a little luck and an electric jack hammer I can find and fix the leak. I'm waaaay too much of a CSOB to hire a real plumber, prolly cost me more in the long run but that's who I am.

Any BTDT stories or advice before I rip into it?
Tanks.

[davep]

I can sympathize. We had a leak in the hot water line as well. It is caused by galvanic corrosion, so it will not be localized. You may have many small leaks, or will have. My house is slab-on-grade. The attic gets well below freezing in winter. The only solution I had was to install a small water heater under the kitchen sink. The cold line usually has no problems. For the bathroom I was able to run a new line alongside the hot water heating line. Hot water lines in the ground always fail.