Pipe Replacement and Re-piping

Galvanized steel supply piping was standard in Toronto houses built before the war and into the fifties. It corrodes from the inside until the bore of a half-inch pipe is a fraction of what it started as, worst at the threaded fittings. The symptoms are pressure that faded over years rather than overnight, hot worse than cold, rusty water on the first draw, and a shower that dies when someone runs the kitchen tap.

Kitec generates the most phone calls. It is a PEX-aluminum-PEX pipe with brass fittings, installed widely in Canada from the mid-nineties into the mid-2000s, often with a manifold or in-floor heating. The fittings dezincify, the pipe itself can degrade, and failures tend to be sudden rather than a slow drip. It matters beyond the plumbing: insurers ask about it, home inspectors flag it, and it comes up on resale. Look for orange and blue pipe with brass fittings near a manifold or the water heater, marked Kitec, KTC, PlumbBetter or WarmRite.

Polybutylene, the grey or blue plastic supply pipe used from the late seventies into the mid-nineties, fails at the fittings the same way. Cast iron is the drainage side of the story. It rusts from the inside, and from the outside at the base where the stack meets the floor and sits in a permanently damp spot. In semis and rowhouses across the old city we find stacks that look sound at eye level and are paper thin behind the wall.

• Galvanized steel supply lines, scaled and restricted
• Kitec PEX-AL-PEX and its brass fittings
• Polybutylene supply piping
• Cast iron drainage stacks and buried house drains
• Old interior lead sections, and coordination on the water service itself
• Renovation and DIY piping that is undersized, unsupported or joined inside a wall
• Copper joined directly to galvanized with no dielectric separation

Both are good pipe. They are good at different things, and anybody who tells you one of them is simply better is selling something.

Type L copper is rigid, indifferent to heat and UV, and can run exposed in a mechanical room or a garage with no protection. It costs more in material and labour, every joint is soldered or pressed, and it suffers erosion-corrosion where pressure is high or a run is undersized. Pinholes are a copper problem, not a PEX problem.

PEX-A is flexible, tolerates a freeze better because it can stretch a little, and can often be pulled through existing cavities. On a re-pipe that decides how much of the house gets opened, which is most of the cost. It has to be kept out of sunlight and away from direct heat, and it needs the right expansion tool and fittings rather than whatever is on the shelf. We normally use both in the same building: PEX for the long concealed runs, copper for exposed mechanical areas and the water heater connections.

This is the part that gets glossed over. Replacing supply piping means access wherever the pipe changes direction, connects to a fixture, or passes through a wall or ceiling. In a finished house that is a lot of holes, in surfaces that will need a drywaller and a painter. We cut the smallest access we can, but a plumber cannot promise the drywall goes back the way it was.

Water is off during working hours while the new distribution goes in, and we bring it back at the end of the day wherever the stage of the work allows. Phasing is possible, a floor at a time, or supply now and the stack when the bathroom is renovated. It costs more overall because some setup gets repeated, and it is still the right decision for plenty of people.

Replacing water distribution or drainage piping generally requires a plumbing permit and an inspection. We pull it under our City of Toronto plumbing contractor licence and schedule the inspection. Having that on record matters at resale.