South Gate is dense residential with a lot of post-war housing, much of it on slab, and a good deal of it modified over the years.
Slab-on-grade construction means supply lines run underneath, and a failure there produces the pattern that confuses homeowners: wet flooring and wet baseboards with nothing visibly leaking anywhere.
What goes wrong in South Gate homes
Slab leaks are the recurring one, and the symptoms are indirect. Flooring lifting or discoloring in a line, baseboards swelling along one wall, a persistent musty smell near the floor.
Where garages have been converted to living space, the added plumbing is often the weak point, particularly where it was tied into an older line.
My baseboards are swelling along one wall.
That is water moving under the flooring toward the perimeter, and it usually means a slab leak or a long-running failure inside the wall. Both need finding rather than waiting.
Can you find a leak without breaking the floor?
Usually. Moisture mapping and thermal imaging narrow it to a small area first, and the point of that is to open the smallest possible opening rather than searching.