A slab leak is a plumbing job that becomes a hauling job about a week later. The plumber finds the line and fixes it. The drying company runs fans. What is left is wet carpet and pad, cut baseboards, the bottom two feet of drywall, and whatever furniture was standing in the water. That pile is what we come for, and it is the last step, not the first.
The order matters more here than on almost any other job we run.
What a slab leak actually leaves behind
North Texas sits on clay that swells and shrinks with the seasons, and the plumbing under a slab moves with it. When a supply line under the concrete gives out, the water does not spray. It wicks. It comes up through the slab and moves sideways under the flooring, which is why the wet spot in the hallway is often nowhere near the actual break.
By the time anybody has stopped it, the material list is fairly predictable.
Carpet and pad. The pad is the part that holds the water. Even when the carpet itself dries, the pad underneath stays wet, and pad is cheap enough that nobody tries to save it. Where old carpet ends up afterward is covered in old carpet and pad removal.
The bottom of the drywall. Restoration crews cut a straight line one or two feet up the wall and pull everything below it, along with the baseboard and often the insulation behind it. That cut material is the bulk of the pile.
Baseboards, shoe molding and door casing. MDF trim swells at the bottom edge and does not go back down.
Laminate and engineered wood. These delaminate. Once the edges have swelled, the plank is done.
Furniture that was sitting in it. Anything with a particleboard base is finished, which covers most bookcases, dressers, entertainment centers and bed frames bought in the last twenty years. Solid wood usually survives. Upholstery and mattresses are a judgment call, and not always ours.
Do not haul anything until it has been photographed
This is the one piece of advice on this page that can cost real money if it gets skipped.
If you are filing a claim, the adjuster needs to see the damage, and in a lot of cases they need to see it before it leaves the property. Photograph everything, keep the plumber's invoice and the drying company's paperwork, and ask your adjuster directly whether you are clear to dispose of the material. Some carriers want an inspection first. Some are fine with photos and a moisture log. Nobody can tell you which yours is except your carrier.
We would rather show up a few days later than have you throw away the proof of your own claim.
Get written clearance before the pile goes. Ask your adjuster, in writing, whether the wet material can be disposed of. That one message is the difference between a documented claim and a set of photos of an empty room. There is no rush on our end, and we will schedule around the inspection.
Where we fall in the order
The same line applies to the plumbing itself. If the leak means the water heater is being replaced too, that unit has to be disconnected and drained by a plumber before we carry anything, which is covered in water heaters, softeners and the utility closet.
We are haulers. We are not a water mitigation company, we do not run dehumidifiers, and we do not do mold remediation. Texas licenses mold assessment and remediation professionals through the state, and the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation is where you check whether the person quoting that work actually holds the license. If somebody tells you a hauling crew can handle a mold problem, that is the wrong crew.
The honest sequence looks like this. Plumber stops the leak. Mitigation company dries the structure and takes moisture readings until the framing reads dry. Whoever is doing the demo cuts out the ruined material. Then we haul what is stacked, and the room is clear for the flooring and drywall crews.
Timing matters because wet material does not stay neutral. The EPA puts the window for acting on wet building material at a day or two, and its guide to mold, moisture and your home is the plain-English version worth reading while the fans are still running. Material that has been sitting damp in a closed garage for three weeks is a different conversation, and we will tell you if we think it needs somebody other than us.
What we will not take
Almost everything in a slab leak pile is fine. Three things are not.
Anything actively growing. If material has visible mold growth on it, that belongs to a remediation contractor who bags and handles it under their own rules, not on an open load with everything else.
Household chemicals that were stored on the floor. Garages take the water too, and the bottom shelf is usually where the paint, the solvent, the pool chemicals and the pesticide live. Those never go on our truck. Most cities in the northern suburbs take them free from residents, and Plano runs its own household chemical collection program. We will point you at your city's rather than guess at it.
Concrete and slab spoil. When a plumber tunnels or breaks the slab, the broken concrete and dirt that comes out is dense material, and dense material is handled differently than a load of wet carpet. Tell us it is there when you call so it does not surprise anyone on site. The rest of what we do and do not take is spelled out in what junk removal will and will not take.
What actually happens to it
Wet carpet and pad, soaked drywall and swollen MDF have no donation value and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Those go to disposal.
What can be pulled out of the pile still gets pulled. Metal goes to a metal recycler, which covers bed frames, shelving standards, appliance parts, and any ductwork that came out with the flooring. Clean cardboard has its own destination. Solid wood furniture that dried out is a genuine donation candidate, and Habitat for Humanity ReStore lists what its locations accept on the donate goods page, though it varies store to store. On the construction side, the EPA's guidance on construction and demolition materials covers what is genuinely recoverable from this kind of debris and what is not. Our stated goal is diverting more than half of every load away from a landfill, and sorting on the way out is how that gets done rather than promised. The longer version is in where your junk goes after pickup.
How the job runs
You send photos of the pile, and of the rooms if the demo has not happened yet. A crew comes out, looks at what is actually there, and gives you a firm number before anything is lifted, with disposal already included. The quote is the bill.
Then you point and we carry. We work around the fans if they are still running, we do not walk on flooring that has been marked, and the path we use gets swept before we leave. Our own crews do the work, not gig labor hired off an app that morning, which matters more than usual in a house that is already torn open. If the material was cut out by a contractor, the room clearing that happens before their crew arrives is covered in clearing rooms before foundation or plumbing work.
We run pickups seven days a week across Plano, Frisco, Allen, McKinney, Richardson, Little Elm, Prosper, The Colony, Wylie and Fairview. Call before noon and the same afternoon is typical, though typical is the honest word rather than a promise. The service page for this kind of work is construction and demolition debris, and you can send us photos whenever the adjuster clears it.
Frequently asked questions
Can you come out before the drying company is finished?
We can, but usually we should not. Material still holding water reads as a bigger job than it is once it dries, and moving it early gets in the mitigation crew's way. If the fans are still on, call us and we will schedule for after.
Do you tear out the wet carpet and drywall yourselves?
We haul what is cut out and stacked. Cutting drywall out of a wall that a mitigation company is documenting is their work, not ours, and we will not step into the middle of a claim.
The furniture looks fine now that it dried. Is it worth keeping?
Solid wood often is. Anything with a particleboard or MDF base has usually swelled at the bottom and will not hold up, even when the surface looks normal. Press on the bottom edge and see if it gives.
What about the broken concrete the plumber left?
Mention it when you call. Concrete and dirt are dense material and get handled differently than a load of carpet and drywall, so we would rather know before the crew is standing in your driveway.
Will my insurance pay for the haul-off?
Sometimes, as part of the claim. Ask your adjuster before you schedule anything, and keep our invoice with the plumber's and the drying company's paperwork.
A slab leak turns a normal week into three contractors and a pile in the garage. The hauling is the easy part of it, and it is the part where the room finally looks like a room again. The rest of what we haul is on the services page.