Repiping

Repiping is the job nobody wants and plenty of properties need. It is also the job most often sold badly — by fear, on a doorstep, without anyone having looked properly at what is actually failing.

We would rather talk you out of it than into it. If a single accessible run has failed once, that is a repair. What follows is for the properties where it genuinely is not.

When repiping is the honest answer

Repeated failures on the same system. One pinhole is an event. Three in two years, in different places, is the pipework telling you what it plans to keep doing. Each patch costs money and buys less time than the last.

Galvanized supply. Plenty of pre-war properties in Coral Gables, and older streets in North Miami and Hialeah, still run some galvanized. It corrodes from the inside, narrows over decades, and the pressure loss is so gradual nobody notices until a faucet is opened somewhere else in the house.

CPVC that has become brittle. Age and UV exposure make it crack at fittings. Once one lets go, the others are the same age.

Water that runs discoloured on first draw. Especially from hot only, and especially after the property has stood unused.

Pressure that has dropped everywhere, gradually. Not one fixture — all of them.

What we do before quoting

Look at it. Properly.

We check the accessible runs, the material, the joints, the pressure and the routing, and we ask what has actually failed and when. If the honest answer is “this system has years left and you have one bad section”, we will say so, quote the section, and leave.

Where a repipe is warranted we plan the routing before anybody opens anything — through attics, soffits, closets and existing chases, using the accesses a property already has. That planning is the difference between a repipe that leaves a house looking like a house and one that leaves it looking like a building site.

How the work runs

Route first, open second. The smallest number of accesses that allow the new run to be made properly and supported correctly.

Section by section. Most households stay in place. Water goes off for parts of the day rather than for the duration.

Old lines isolated, not abandoned live. Redundant pipework is capped properly so nothing is left pressurised behind a wall.

Pressure-tested before anything is closed. Every new run is proved before the drywall goes back.

Making good is part of the quote. Closing, taping, finishing and cleaning. Matching an existing tile or a textured ceiling costs more than plain board, and we say so up front rather than discovering it at the end.

Work is completed to the Florida Building Code and presented for inspection where inspection applies, by a licensed Florida contractor, Lic. #CFC1433820.

On a slab

Single-story properties across Kendall, Pinecrest and much of west Miami-Dade run supply under the concrete. When that fails, breaking the slab is rarely the right answer. Re-routing overhead — through the attic and down to fixtures — is usually faster, cheaper, and far less disruptive than excavating a living room floor, and it leaves the new pipework accessible for the next thirty years rather than buried again.

Living through it

Most households stay in the property while it is repiped, and the question everyone actually wants answered is what the days look like.

Water goes off in sections rather than for the duration. We agree in advance which fixtures stay in service and when, so nobody discovers at eight in the morning that there is no bathroom. Where a property has more than one bathroom, we sequence so one is always available.

Dust is the other half of it. Containment goes up before the first opening is made, and the route between the work and the front door gets protected. Cutting drywall without containment puts fine dust through a whole property, and no amount of cleaning afterwards is as good as not doing it.

Pets and home offices are worth mentioning when you book. Both change the sequence, and both are easier to plan around than to work around.

What affects the cost

• How much of the property is being done. A partial repipe of one wing is not a whole-house job.
• Routing. A property with an accessible attic is straightforward. A concrete high-rise unit with everything in the slab is not.
• Material and fixture count. Every fixture is a termination.
• Making good. Plain drywall is cheap to close. Period plaster, textured ceilings and discontinued tile are not.
• Building requirements. Condo repipes bring association approval, insurance certificates and scheduled water shut-offs.

You get the figure in writing before anything starts.