Do I need to have a repipe? You hear water when you go outside your home. It’s a base foundation and you can hear what seems to be like water under neath your home. YES! You definitely have a concern if you water underneath the base of your home, or your apartment complex.
Any type of water, where it usually doesn’t belong, can be a very big concern. But if you are fortunate enough to hear that hissing sound, that would be a water supply line that’s leaking. If you hear no hissing sound, and you hear water maybe when you flush the toilet, or periodically when you are using the sink, or you are doing your laundry, that would be a drain pipe.
Let’s focus on the drain pipe first. When. You have a drain pipe, you’re most likely going to have a crack, and crack drain lines are usually made up of cast iron. So cast iron, since it is made out of metal, over time, it rust, corrode, and most often, it gets cracks in it. So what will generally happen is the water will be flowing through the pipes, and there is a section in the pipes that has a crack, which allows the water to leak out of it, when the water is running through it.
You can fix that pipe typically in a crawl space, if you’re lucky and it is close to the access, from some where as low as $750-$1,500 and it could be upwards of $2,500-$5,000; if it’s a larger section of the pipe. Often with cast iron, you could do with a 1-2 foot section, but typically it’s 15-25 + feet, because if it’s cracked by then, it’s probably cracked in a whole a lot of other areas as well. It could be even a hairline crack, where there water is still flowing, or the top part could be corroded, and the water is still flowing on the troth of the bottom.
But you still have an open sewage pipe, and you should have it replaced. Just keep that in mind when you’re running water and you’re hearing strange noises throughout your home, it’s most likely your drain pipe. It could be s small branch line, which is about 2 inches, which is usually your kitchen drain, laundry, sink or tub, this are about 2 inch drains.
We would replace the old cast iron, with an ABS, which are black pipes. If it’s water under pressure, that would be like a copper. 1/2 inch copper usually. If it’s the main feed into your home, it’s usually a 3/4 inch. That’s the hissing sound. If you want to replaced that pipe, you cu out the damage section of the copper, you reset the pipe and you are good to go.
But if you have a pin hole in the pipe, you’re usually going to get another one, not to far in the distant future. Repipe So consider re piping. You can either go with a copper, or you can go with PEX, which is a flexible plastic material. Those are your two ways to upgrade your pipes from the old galvanized that you typically have. When you’re dealing with galvanized, you can fix galvanized as well, it’s threaded, it’s old, it’;s brittle, it’s corroded, and it’ll collapse on you when you’re working on it. When you can, consider saving up and getting a repipe.