San Carlos Plumbing: Repair the Leak or Repipe the House?
San Carlos houses started going up in 1959, and many more were finished by the mid-1960s, so plenty of the original water lines here are over sixty years old. When one of them leaks, you have to decide whether to fix that one spot or start planning a repipe. You can make most of that call yourself with a refrigerator magnet and an inexpensive pressure gauge.
What Are Your Pipes Made Of?
Look where the water lines come out of the wall: under the kitchen sink, behind the washing machine, at the top of the water heater. Copper is brown or reddish, and old joints often carry a green crust. Galvanized steel is a flat gray and is joined with threaded fittings that look like oversized nuts. If you can’t tell by looking, hold a fridge magnet to the pipe. It grabs galvanized steel and slides right off copper. Check more than one spot. The short pieces near a water heater or under a sink get replaced more often than anything else in a house, so they can be copper even when the pipe inside the walls isn’t. A gray, threaded line feeding an outside hose bib means galvanized is still in the system somewhere, and a plumber should trace how much is left.Signs the Problem Is the Whole System
- Pressure has dropped at several fixtures at once.
- Water runs brown or rusty for a few seconds when a tap first opens.
- You’ve had pinhole leaks in more than one room.
- Repairs keep coming closer together.
Problems That Look Like Old Pipe but Aren’t
Before anyone quotes you a repipe, rule these out. Most of them are cheap fixes. One weak faucet. Low pressure at a single faucet is usually a clogged aerator or a worn cartridge in that faucet, not the pipe behind it. Weak or rusty hot water only. Run the cold tap alone in the tub for a minute. If the cold stays clear and strong, look at the water heater and the valve on top of it before you look at the pipes. A leak under one sink. That’s most often the shutoff valve or the braided supply hose. High house pressure. Thread a pressure gauge onto an outside hose bib, make sure nothing is running inside, and open the bib. Above 80 psi, the house needs a working pressure regulator. Pressure that high strains every fitting and hose, and the leaks it causes are easy to blame on old pipe. While you’re at it, try closing your main shutoff. Many older homes still have a gate valve with a round handle that sticks or never fully stops the water. Replace that first. Every repair after it, a repipe included, starts with turning the water off. And if your pipes turn out to be copper and you’ve had one pinhole leak in many years, fix that leak and leave the rest alone.If You Do Repipe
Every repipe starts with an assessment of what’s failing and what the house is plumbed with. From there the job is either the whole house or just the runs causing trouble, in copper or PEX depending on the layout and code. Our repipe installation page walks through it in more detail. The City of San Diego requires a plumbing permit to replace all or part of a plumbing system. Whether it’s the simple no-plan type or a permit with plans depends on the scope, and homes with a historic or potentially historic designation always need plans. We pull the permit and schedule the inspection as part of the job. The City’s plumbing and gas permit page lays out the rules if you want to read them yourself.Two Questions We Hear From San Carlos Owners
Can you replace only the galvanized sections?
Sometimes. If the assessment shows the trouble is limited to a few runs, we can replace just those. When galvanized runs through most of the house, doing it piece by piece usually costs more over a few years than doing it once.A drain keeps backing up. Can you clear it?
We don’t do drain cleaning. Drain Mob, our partner, handles clogs and backups, and we stick to the water, gas and fixture side of the house. Courtesy Plumbing (CSLB #910268) answers weekdays from 8 to 5 at (858) 567-0544. You can also reach us through the contact form. Tell us what the magnet test showed, and we’ll know where to start.
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