Leaking Copper Pipe in Slab

[Michael S.]

looking at potentially a disaster of a situation regarding copper pipes inside concrete slab.

-Home is 10 years old

-Copper pipe inside the concrete slab had a leak.

-Pinpoint leak was found (after digging through several feet of concrete, using ultrasound to find leak)

-Pipes appear to be pretty thoroughly corroded

Is this normal for copper pipes to corrode inside concrete slab?  Is it normal to run pipes through the concrete, rather than above it?  Was this a 1 in a million event, or will the rest of the copper piping fail eventually?  Unfortunately the builder is out of business now.  1 other home in the development had the same type of leak in the slab about 2 years ago.

I'm worried that I can't sell at any reasonable price because I would have to disclose the issue with the pipes, and by now word is probably getting around about the pipes being a liability in this development.

Thanks everyone in advance for the ideas...

[JD Martin]

Originally posted by @Michael Gessner:

@jd Martin, true copper is old school, but plastic fails, im just given my experience in the plumbing field, true prob not a heat line, but hey u never know I here the south is getting cold lol. My issue with poly lines, where the proof it lasts 50 years, no copper yes in ideal conditions can last a few years or decade's, I like what's proven and has worked especially under the foundation of a home where it's pretty expensive to repair. Theirs also ways to protect the copper to further its longevity, but your rights it's all about location and what works in each demographic. In terms of the plastic lasting, I've replaced so many of them with those high class crimp fittings only to just pull apart in a few years, give me a sweated joint k copper water main all day, more expensive but it should last. 

Plus less joints, even if you hard pipe with pvc u'll have glued joints, where a roll of copper, one at the street the other in the house 

 No doubt I would go with copper under a slab over Schedule 40 but there shouldn't be any joints in the slab with PEX. Around here we often have runs of more than 100 feet and a 500 foot roll of PEX is easy to handle, where you'll be putting 60/100 foot rolls of copper together. Most crimp joints that fail were either the old style cheap 90s or done improperly. I'm with you, when I was a plumber I swore by copper - I put it in my own house - but back in about 04/05 when copper started going through the roof we had to start giving PEX a try and I have been convinced based on hundreds of service lines with compression fittings, some in places where we are running 200+ psi at the street. Our failure rates on the PEX is virtually zero.