When a House Needs a Repipe, and What One Involves

Materials and what they mean

• Galvanized steel (pre-1960s): rusts shut, then through, at every thread. Low pressure and rusty water after a shutoff. Repipe.
• Copper (1960s onward): sound when the water and the installation suit it; pinholes where they don't. One pinhole is a repair; the third is a repipe.
• Polybutylene (late 1970s to mid 1990s): gray pipe with acetal or metal crimp fittings that crack. Repipe, even before it leaks, in most cases.
• CPVC (1980s onward): becomes brittle with age and hot water; fails at joints. Repair or repipe by condition.
• PEX (1990s onward): the modern standard and what a repipe uses. Early installs with certain brass fittings had problems; later ones are sound.

Repair or repipe

The decision is made with the pipe exposed at a repair. If the material is galvanized or polybutylene, the rest of the house has the same material and the same failure waiting. If it's copper, the pipe on either side of the pinhole tells the story: clean and bright means a sound system with one bad spot; green-blue staining, pitting and earlier patches mean the system is done. We show the owner and say which it is.

What a repipe involves

A survey of the existing system and a routing plan. Openings in finished walls and ceilings marked in advance with the owner, kept to what the routing needs. New PEX-A from a manifold or trunk at the point of entry through the crawlspace, attic or walls to every fixture, with new quarter-turn shutoffs, new water heater connections, and a new main shutoff and pressure regulator where needed. Old lines removed where accessible and capped where not. Pressure test, inspection, patching and priming. Most single-family homes take two to four days, with water restored each evening.

The exterior line

A house with galvanized or polybutylene inside almost always has the same vintage outside, from the meter to the foundation. A repipe is the moment to replace that too, in one continuous line to the new manifold. We do both sides, the exterior with our own excavation equipment and the interior with licensed plumbers, so there's no end-of-life pipe left anywhere.

Permits and documentation

Most Kitsap jurisdictions require a plumbing permit for a repipe. We pull it and schedule the inspection as a registered general contractor. The finished system is documented: routing, manifold, shutoffs, water heater connections, so the next owner knows what's in the walls.