Galvanized supply pipe has a service life, and a lot of Front Range housing stock is now past the end of it. Rust-coloured water and pressure that has quietly halved over twenty years are the symptoms.
AT A GLANCE
- Typical whole-house job
- 3 to 5 days depending on size and access
- Permit required
- Yes. Pulled by us, inspected before close-up.
- Water off
- Only during tie-ins, not for the whole job
- Common trigger
- Galvanized supply lines, typically in pre-1970 houses
The failure pattern
Galvanized steel pipe was standard in American houses for decades and it works well for about fifty to seventy years. Then the zinc coating gives out, the steel underneath starts to corrode, and two things happen at once: the water picks up rust, and the internal diameter closes down with scale until a three-quarter-inch pipe is passing water like a quarter-inch one.
That second part is why pressure loss is so gradual that people stop noticing. It happens over two decades. Guests notice.
Copper has a different failure mode — pinhole leaks, often driven by water chemistry or by velocity at fittings where the pipe was reamed badly during the original install. Pinholes cluster. When you have had three, you are going to have a fourth.
Finding it before opening anything
We locate before we cut. That means pressure isolation to narrow down which branch is losing water, acoustic or thermal location to pin it within a wall, and only then a clean opening in one place rather than exploratory demolition across a ceiling.
Doing it once
On a whole-house job the sequence matters more than the pipe. New runs get installed alongside the old system while the old system is still live, so the house keeps water. Tie-ins get scheduled and you get told when. The whole system gets pressure-tested and held before an inspector sees it, and before any drywall closes.
That last part is the one that separates commercial habits from residential ones. On a hospital job you never close a wall on untested pipe, because opening it again is unthinkable. The same logic applies to your ceiling.
WHAT'S INCLUDED
- Flat-rate quote for the whole scope before we start
- Leak location before any drywall is opened
- Permit pulled, rough-in inspected before anything is closed up
- Full system pressure test before we call it done
- Drywall cut cleanly and patched, not torn open
- Warranty on labour and on the fittings we supply
COMMON QUESTIONS
How do I know if I need a re-pipe?
The usual signs are discoloured water at first draw, water pressure that has dropped gradually over years rather than suddenly, visible corrosion at threaded joints, and repeat pinhole leaks. One pinhole leak is a repair. A third pinhole leak in two years means the pipe is telling you the rest of it is the same age.
How long does a whole-house re-pipe take?
Three to five days for a typical single-family house, depending on size, number of bathrooms, and how accessible the runs are. Your water is not off for that whole time — it goes off during tie-ins, which is usually a few hours a day, and we tell you in advance when.
PEX or copper?
Both are code-compliant and both are appropriate in different places. PEX is faster to install, has far fewer joints, handles a freeze better because it can expand slightly, and costs less. Copper is more rigid, tolerates UV and high heat better, and some people simply prefer it. We will quote either and tell you honestly which we would put in our own house for your specific layout.
Will you have to tear up my walls?
Some drywall has to come out to run new pipe. The difference between a good re-pipe and a bad one is how much, and how it is cut. We plan runs to minimise openings, cut clean rectangles that patch easily rather than smashing through, and we tell you where the openings will be before we make them.
Can you just repair the leak instead?
Often, yes, and if that is the right call we will say so. A single failure on otherwise sound pipe is a repair. The question we will ask you is how old the pipe is and how many times this has happened, because repeatedly repairing a system that is uniformly at end of life costs more over three years than replacing it once.