Copper water line through slab floor.

[Brandon Dean]

Hello,

I'm looking for a bit of advice.

We recently removed a wall in our kitchen to make room for a remodel. The wall contained a copper water line (cold) that was for the fridge. It comes up directly out of the slab.

The fridge's new location is across the room.

Ideally, we would like to relocate the water line in the new fridge location. If that's just too much work, we'd like to cap it off where it is. (Obviously flush with the floor.) Hardwood will be installed over it.

I believe the proper method is to cut a channel in the slab from the existing pipe to the new location. Then dig a channel in the dirt below, run the pipe, and then fill up the channel with dirt. Then fill up the slab with new concrete.

My questions are:

1. Can I simply sweat the pipe connections under the slab or is something more substantial required?

2. Can I simply buy a diamond blade for my circular saw to cut the slab? Or should I rent something else? The distance is about 12 feet.

3. How thick is the slab anyway?

4. If we opt to simply do without the copper water line in the new location, can I just chip away at the slab until the pipe is below the surface, cut it off, sweat on a cap, and then bury the thing in concrete? Or do I need to cut all the way through the slab to the Earth before and cap it there?

5. Finally, if we opt not to cut a channel in the slab, can I run a water line to the fridge by connecting to the water line under the sink, up the kitchen wall, across the ceiling joist, and down the far kitchen wall where the fridge will be? Can I do this with the flexible plastic fridge water line?

If any of these questions are just plain dumb, I appreciate your patience with me.

EB

 

[Terry]

Normally soldering under a slab is expected to be brazed or silver soldered. Code doesn't like the standard 95% tin for that, though it seems like good stuff to me.
With slab plumb, they install manifolds above the floor with as many tees as they need, keeping all of the joints above the slab floor. If you can locate that manifold, it would be a good place to cap the line. You can try capping the end of the line too. Slab concrete tends to be 3.5" to about 4". For a twelve foot long cut I would hire someone that has a wet saw and watch them. It's way quicker, safer and neater. You don't need to do everything on a project, and that's a good one to be an observer on.

For running a new line, PEX works well.