Whole House Repipe
If your home was built before 1970, there’s a decent chance the water is still traveling through galvanized steel pipe that’s older than most of the people drinking from it. If it was built in the 1980s, you might be dealing with gray polybutylene instead — a plastic pipe that was popular for about fifteen years before plumbers and insurance companies alike figured out it fails from the inside out. Either way, if you’re noticing weak water pressure, rust-colored water, or you’ve patched your third pinhole leak this year, you’re not looking at a repair problem anymore. You’re looking at a repipe.
A whole house repipe means replacing every water supply line in the home — from the main shutoff to every fixture — with new material. It’s a bigger job than most homeowners expect to need, but it’s also more routine than most homeowners expect, because Action’s crews do them constantly across both Utah and Arizona, where the housing stock spans everything from 1940s brick bungalows to 1990s tract homes full of polybutylene.
Why Old Pipe Fails
Galvanized steel pipe corrodes from the inside. The zinc coating that protects the steel wears away over decades of mineral-heavy water passing through it, and once it’s gone, rust builds up on the pipe walls the same way it would on any exposed steel. That buildup narrows the interior diameter of the pipe — which is why a 60-year-old galvanized line can drop your shower pressure to a trickle even though nothing is technically “broken” — and eventually it corrodes through, usually at a joint, usually at the worst possible time.
Polybutylene is a different failure mode entirely. The plastic itself reacts with chlorine and chloramine, common disinfectants in municipal water supplies in both states, and becomes brittle from the inside over years of exposure. It doesn’t show visible wear from the outside. It just fails — often at a fitting — sometimes catastrophically, which is why several major insurers either won’t write a policy on a home with known poly pipe or require it be disclosed and often replaced.
Either material gives you the same warning signs before full failure: pressure that’s dropped noticeably over the years, water that comes out discolored or metallic-tasting after periods of disuse, and pinhole leaks that show up as a damp spot on a ceiling or a mysteriously high water bill. If you’ve had more than one pinhole leak in the last couple of years, that’s not bad luck — that’s the whole system telling you it’s at end of life.
PEX vs. Copper — What We Actually Recommend
Action repipes with either PEX or copper depending on the home and the homeowner’s priorities, and we’ll tell you honestly which one fits your situation rather than pushing whichever is easier for us that week.
PEX (cross-linked polyethylene) is what most repipes in Utah and Arizona get today, and for good reason. It’s flexible, which means fewer joints and fittings snaking through walls — every fitting is a potential future leak point, so fewer of them is a real durability advantage, not just a labor shortcut. It doesn’t corrode, it handles the mineral content in Wasatch Front and desert Southwest water without scaling the way copper can, and it tolerates a hard freeze without splitting the way rigid copper does — worth noting for homes in Utah’s colder microclimates. It’s also faster to install, which keeps labor cost and disruption down.
Copper is still the right call in specific situations — some municipal codes require it for certain exposed runs, some homeowners want it for resale expectations in older, higher-end neighborhoods, and it remains the more rodent- and UV-resistant option for exposed exterior runs. We’ll walk you through the tradeoff for your specific home rather than defaulting to one material for every job.
The One-Day Repipe Process
Most whole-home repipes at Action are scheduled to complete water service disruption in a single day, sometimes two for larger or multi-story homes. Here’s roughly how it goes: the crew maps every fixture in the home and plans routes that minimize wall openings — running new PEX through basements, attics, and crawlspaces wherever possible instead of every interior wall. Where a wall does need to be opened to route a line to an upstairs bathroom or a kitchen island, the openings are kept as small and as few as possible, and we coordinate the patch-and-paint prep before we leave, whether that’s our own drywall trade or a referral you’re comfortable with.
Old pipe gets capped or removed, new lines get pressure-tested before anything is buttoned up, and every fixture gets reconnected and checked for pressure and leaks before the crew leaves. You’ll be without water for stretches during the day, not the whole week — this isn’t a job that leaves your household camping out at a hotel.
FAQ
Q: How do I know if I actually need a repipe versus just fixing the leak I have?
A: One pinhole leak in isolation might just be a bad spot in otherwise sound pipe. But if you’ve had more than one leak in different locations, if your water pressure has been declining for years, or if you know your home has galvanized or polybutylene supply lines, repeated spot repairs usually end up costing more over time than one repipe — and they don’t fix the underlying corrosion that’s going to keep producing new leaks.
Q: Will a repipe damage my walls and ceilings?
A: There’s some wall access required, but our crews route new lines through basements, attics, and crawlspaces whenever the home’s layout allows it, which minimizes the number of openings needed. Any opening that is required gets patched, and we coordinate that finish work so you’re not left with holes in your walls.
Q: How long does a whole house repipe take?
A: Most single-family homes are done in one day for the plumbing work itself, with a second day sometimes needed for larger homes or complex layouts. Drywall patch and paint, if part of the job, typically follows within a few days after.
Q: Is PEX safe for drinking water?
A: Yes. PEX has been approved under national plumbing codes for potable water use for decades and is the standard material for new residential construction across both Utah and Arizona today.
Office serving this page: SLC — Gladiola St, Salt Lake City, UT