My Copper Pipes Keep Getting Pinhole Leaks (Silverdale, WA)

What usually causes pinhole leaks in copper in Silverdale

In Silverdale we check age before anything else, because a split poly line with no warning is how it shows up here. Copper from the 1960s and 70s has been in service for half a century, and thin spots fail first. Trench walls that slough near Dyes Inlet makes the signs misleading, so we confirm rather than assume.

Next: water chemistry. Slightly aggressive water dissolves copper from the inside over decades. With dense hardpan up on Ridgetop under 60- to 120-foot subdivision runs, the symptoms can look identical to the first cause, which is why the meter test and the locate matter.

And contact corrosion: copper against concrete, fill, a steel hanger or a nail plate corrodes at the contact point. Less common on Ridgetop and Island Lake cul-de-sacs, but we've found it near Ridgetop.

First steps on a Silverdale property

When we expose polybutylene in Silverdale we recommend replacing the whole run, because the material fails from the inside and a repair in one spot leaves the same pipe everywhere else.

Do this before anyone digs loose outwash on the Clear Creek flats in Silverdale: count the pinhole repairs the house has had and where. Do the meter test to catch the current leak if there is one. It takes minutes and it tells us whether the problem is on Ridgetop and Island Lake cul-de-sacs or inside the house.

How we fix it

The repair side is whole-house repipe. On tight side yards full of irrigation that means tie in and test, then run new lines in a winter water table close to the surface where the problem actually is, then survey. If what we expose is gray polybutylene from the 1980s at the end of its life, we say so with the pipe in your hand.

From Ridgetop to Clear Creek and out around Silverdale Way, pinhole leaks in copper is a regular Silverdale call for us. Our home base, and emergencies on 60- to 120-foot subdivision runs dispatch immediately, any hour.