Port Orchard: My Copper Pipes Keep Getting Pinhole Leaks

Why this happens in Port Orchard

In Port Orchard we check contact corrosion before anything else, because a utility notice about continuous usage is how it shows up here. Copper against concrete, fill, a steel hanger or a nail plate corrodes at the contact point. Peat in the Long Lake bottoms makes the signs misleading, so we confirm rather than assume.

Next: water chemistry. Slightly aggressive water dissolves copper from the inside over decades. With slick Kitsap Formation clay on the hillsides under 200-foot runs off Sedgwick Road, the symptoms can look identical to the first cause, which is why the meter test and the locate matter.

Don't overlook age. Copper from the 1960s and 70s has been in service for half a century, and thin spots fail first. On Port Orchard properties from a century of building, from the 1900s waterfront to the newest subdivisions it comes up more than you'd think.

Before you call

We bring the mini excavator to the acreage and the shovels to the hill.

Do this before anyone digs clay that moves on the Bay Street slopes in Port Orchard: count the pinhole repairs the house has had and where. Look at exposed copper in the crawlspace for green-blue staining or earlier patches. It takes minutes and it tells us whether the problem is on steep lots climbing from Sinclair Inlet or inside the house.

What happens next

The repair side is whole-house repipe. On newer McCormick Woods lots with buried irrigation that means tie in and test, then survey in outwash on the Sedgwick and Bethel flats where the problem actually is, then abandon or remove old lines. If what we expose is PEX at insert fittings in McCormick Woods at the end of its life, we say so with the pipe in your hand.

From Bethel Road to Long Lake and out around Retsil, pinhole leaks in copper is a regular Port Orchard call for us. A quick run across the Sinclair Inlet bridge, and emergencies on 200-foot runs off Sedgwick Road dispatch immediately, any hour.