Repiping old Portland homes
A repipe replaces the water supply lines in a house, all or part of them. It's a big job, but in the Portland metro it's a common one, because two kinds of pipe installed here across the last century fail on a schedule the house doesn't get to choose.
What's actually in the walls
- Galvanized steel, pre-1960s. The close-in bungalows and four-squares in Sellwood, Laurelhurst, Irvington, and Alberta were plumbed with galvanized steel. It corrodes from the inside out: rust narrows the pipe, water pressure fades over years, and the first sign many owners notice is brown water from a tap that hasn't run in a while. Galvanized pipe past its service life doesn't get better.
- Polybutylene, roughly 1978 to 1995. Gray plastic pipe installed heavily in the metro's suburban-era builds. It became notorious for failing without warning at fittings and along the pipe itself, and it was the subject of a major class-action settlement decades ago. Polybutylene in a house is a question of when, not if, and many insurers and buyers treat it accordingly.
The signs a repipe is due
Pressure that keeps dropping house-wide, discolored water, pinhole leaks that keep showing up in new spots, or a plumber who tells you the last repair was the third patch on the same run. One leak is a repair. A pattern of leaks is the pipe telling you it's done.
There's also the slab leak version: on slab-on-grade homes, a supply line under the slab can fail repeatedly, and rerouting the line through the walls is often the permanent fix rather than opening the slab twice.
What the job looks like
Most repipes these days run PEX, a flexible plastic that snakes through walls with far less demolition than rigid pipe needs. Copper remains an option and some owners prefer it, at a higher material cost. A whole-house repipe typically means a few days of drywall patches afterward, but the water is usually back on each evening. The honest question to ask is scope: a full repipe versus only the failing section, and the answer depends on what else is in the walls.
If your house was built before 1960 or has gray plastic pipe under the sinks, it's worth having a plumber tell you what you're working with. A repiping estimate starts with identifying the material, and a leak detection visit can find an active failure before it finds you.
