New lines through an Ewa Beach house, without moving out.
When patching one leak at a time stops making sense, we replace the supply lines, close the walls back up, and keep the water on overnight.
Timing
Tract houses from the seventies are all aging on the same clock.
Ewa Beach grew in waves, and the plumbing tells you which wave a house came from. Homes built through the seventies and eighties went in with galvanized steel on the supply side. Galvanized does not fail all at once. It narrows, year after year, as rust builds up on the inside wall of the pipe until the opening is a fraction of what it was. That is why a house can go from fine to frustrating in a couple of seasons with nothing obvious having happened.
Ewa Beach grew in waves, and the plumbing tells you which wave a house came from.
The copper that followed it into the newer subdivisions has its own clock. Copper is a good pipe and we still install it, but thin-wall copper in an aggressive water and salt-air environment starts producing pinholes eventually, usually in the hot side first, usually in a spot you cannot see. One pinhole is a repair. The third one in eighteen months is a message.
We are not in a hurry to sell anybody a repipe. Plenty of Ewa Beach houses have thirty years left in the lines and just need a valve or a fixture. But when we have been back to the same address three times and the pipe is the common factor, we will say so, because telling you what is actually wrong is the reason John started this company in the first place.
Signals
Six things homeowners tell us right before we pull a wall open.
- Pressure drops to a trickle in the shower when the kitchen tap runs
- Water comes out rusty or brown after the house has sat a few hours
- A second or third pinhole leak in the same house inside a year
- Hot water takes noticeably longer to arrive than it used to
- Visible threaded steel pipe under the house or in the garage, scaled and flaking
- A stain on the ceiling below an upstairs bathroom that keeps coming back
Any one of those on its own can be something small. Two or three together, in a house old enough to have the original supply lines, usually means the pipe itself is finished.
Diagnosis
We check the pressure before we say the word repipe.
A repipe is a real project, so we want to be sure the pipe is the problem and not a pressure regulator, a clogged aerator, or a single corroded shutoff valve. We take pressure readings at more than one point, look at the water coming out of the hot and cold side separately, and look at whatever pipe is exposed in the garage, the crawl space, or under a sink.
Sometimes that walk-through ends with us tightening a valve and charging you for an hour. Sometimes it ends with us explaining that the galvanized in the wall is done. Either way you get the actual answer and a clear price before anybody starts cutting. Tell us what your water is doing and we will come look.
Material
PEX and copper both live fine out here.
There is no single right answer, and anyone who gives you one without looking at your house is selling rather than diagnosing.
PEX is flexible, which means we can pull long runs with far fewer joints and fish them through existing framing. Fewer joints means fewer places to leak, and less fishing means fewer holes in your drywall. In a single-story tract home with an accessible attic, that usually adds up to a cleaner job and a shorter week.
Copper is rigid and it looks like what people picture when they picture plumbing. It is the right pick where lines run exposed in a garage or along an exterior wall, where the run is short and straight, or where a homeowner has a preference and we can honor it without making the job worse. We install both properly, with listed fittings and a pressure test before anything gets closed up.
Start my fix“Shoreline did a great job at less than a third of the cost of a competitor, and at the price they quoted. I’ll definitely use them in the future.”
Access
Small cuts, in places that close cleanly.
The part people dread is the drywall. It is fair to dread it, and it is also the part where an experienced crew makes the biggest difference. Before we start, we walk the house and mark exactly where we need to open up. We cut small, we cut where a patch will close flat, and we favor the back of a closet or a low spot behind a toilet over the middle of your living room wall.
Where the attic gives us a path, we come down inside the wall cavity and barely touch the finished surfaces at all. Where it does not, we tell you before the first cut, not on day three when you are already living around it.
When the new lines are tested and holding, we patch the openings and leave them ready for texture and paint. You will know which walls need a painter and which ones do not, because we tell you that at the start too.
Week
What the days look like with your family still in the house.
Most Ewa Beach repipes run a handful of days, and you sleep in your own bed every one of them. We work in zones rather than shutting the whole house down. Day one is usually protection and access: floors covered, furniture moved off the walls we marked, openings cut, the first runs pulled.
The middle days are the new lines going in, zone by zone, tied back into each fixture. One bathroom might be off for an afternoon while we land its supply stubs and valves. The kitchen might be off for a stretch the next morning. We tell you at the start of each day which fixture goes quiet and roughly when it comes back.
Every evening before we leave, the water goes back on. That is not a favor, it is how we plan the sequence, because a family with kids cannot spend four nights without a working toilet and a shower. The last day is testing, patching, cleanup, and a walk-through where we show you the new shutoffs and where they are.
See how it looks when it is done in our recent work across Oahu.
Nearby
The rest of what we handle around Ewa Beach.
A repipe often starts as something else. If yours started with a wet wall or a water bill that jumped, leak detection in Ewa Beach is the right first call. If a line already let go, we handle emergency plumbing in Ewa Beach around the clock. Slow fixtures and backed-up kitchen lines are drain cleaning in Ewa Beach, and if the tank in the garage is on borrowed time, look at water heater installation in Ewa Beach.
The full list of what we do out here is on the Ewa Beach page, and our island-wide repiping service page covers how we approach this work everywhere on Oahu, from Ocean Pointe out to the rest of the coast.
Not sure which one you need? Describe it the way you would to a neighbor and we will point you the right way. Send us the details or call (808) 445-3585 and talk to a person.
Answers
Frequently asked questions
Can we stay in the house while you repipe it?
Almost always, yes. We work one zone at a time and turn the water back on before we leave each evening, so you have a working bathroom and kitchen overnight. The only rough stretch is the few hours a day when a particular fixture is off.
PEX or copper for an Ewa Beach house?
Both work here and we install both. PEX runs in longer pieces with fewer joints and takes less opening of the walls, so it often makes sense in a tract home. Copper is the answer where lines are exposed or a homeowner simply prefers it. We look at your layout and tell you straight which one fits.
Do you patch the walls back up?
We cut small and in places that close cleanly, then we patch the drywall and leave it ready for texture and paint. We tell you before we start exactly which walls get opened, so nothing is a surprise on day three.
How do I know it is the pipe and not the fixture?
One weak faucet is usually a fixture. Weak pressure everywhere, rusty water at more than one tap, and a second or third pinhole leak in the same year point at the pipe. We check pressure at more than one point before we say the word repipe.
Is the work permitted and done to code?
Yes. Hawaii plumbing contractor license #37423. The new lines get pressure tested before anything closes up, every connection is a listed fitting, and we handle the permitting side so you are not chasing paperwork.
Do I have to repipe the whole house at once?
Not always. Some Ewa Beach homes only need the hot side, or one wing where the old galvanized is still in place. We will tell you honestly when a partial repipe solves it and when doing half the house just means we come back.
Start your fix
Tell us what the pipes are doing
Roughly when the house was built, what the pressure is like, and whether you have had leaks before. Send that over and we will set up a visit. Or call the crew now at (808) 445-3585, a person picks up.