Older Kailua homes, repiped one zone at a time.
When the same old pipe keeps leaking in new places, we replace the lines, patch the walls and have your water back on every night.
Pattern
The third leak in a year is the house telling you something.
A single leak is a repair. We find it, fix it, test it and go. The trouble starts when we are back at the same Kailua house a few months later for a different spot on the same run of pipe, and then again after that. Each of those repairs is honest work, and each one holds.
Each repair holds. The pipe around it keeps getting older anyway.
So we watch for a pattern. Leaks that move around the house instead of repeating at one fitting. Water pressure that has slid downhill for a couple of years with no single cause we can point at. Discolored water from more than one tap after the lines sit overnight. When two or three of those show up together, patching turns into paying for the same problem over and over, and a repipe starts making more sense than another visit.
We will not push a repipe on a house that does not need one. Plenty of calls end with a new shutoff valve or a fixture cartridge and nothing more. John started Shoreline because the company he worked for did not do the work right, and he wanted people to get the service they were promised. That means telling you straight what is wrong, including when it is small. When it is the pipe, we say that too.
Signs
What worn-out supply lines do first.
- The shower thins out whenever somebody runs the kitchen sink
- Brown or rust-tinted water first thing in the morning
- Pinhole leaks turning up in a new room each time
- Green crust or white scale on pipe you can see under a sink or the house
- Hot water taking longer to reach the far bathroom than it used to
- A ceiling or wall stain that dries out, then comes back in the same place
Kailua’s older houses, checked before a single cut.
Kailua has a lot of older homes, and older homes come with aging lines. Some still carry galvanized steel that rusts closed from the inside, a little narrower every year. Others have copper that held up for a long time and is now wearing thin, often on the hot side first. Close to the beach, salt air adds its own wear on every pipe and connection it can reach: under the house, along an outside wall, at the hose bibs.
Before we bring up a repipe, we rule out the simpler answers. A failing pressure regulator, a clogged aerator or one bad shutoff can all act like a tired system. We read pressure at more than one fixture, run hot and cold separately and look at every length of pipe we can see. Then you get what we found and a clear price in plain words, and the quote is the price. Tell us what your water is doing and we will come take a look.
PEX or copper, with the salt air in mind.
PEX is flexible tubing. It pulls through framing in long pieces with very few joints, so there are fewer places for a leak to start and fewer holes to cut getting it where it needs to go. Inside walls and through an attic, out of the sun, it is a strong choice for an older house, and the tubing itself does not corrode. Sunlight is its weak spot, so any run that comes outside gets protected or switches material.
Copper is rigid, lasts well when it is sized and supported right, and it is what a lot of people picture when they think of plumbing. On a beach-town house we are careful about where it goes. Copper and brass sitting in salt air can turn green and crusty at the joints over the years, so outside runs and connections get the right fittings and protection, and exposed metal stays limited to the spots that truly need it. Some homeowners want copper through the whole house anyway, and we do that well too.
Start my fix“All of their plumbers are highly skilled. Thank you John for always taking care of us.”
The whole house, or only the bathroom that keeps failing.
Not every repipe is the whole house. Sometimes one bathroom has had its supply lines patched twice and the rest of the plumbing is fine. Sometimes it is the kitchen run, or only the hot side, where older copper has been wearing through while the cold lines still look good. A partial repipe can be exactly the right call.
It can also be the wrong one. If the pipe we would be tying into is in the same shape as the pipe we are pulling out, a partial job just means we are back for the rest in a year or two, opening walls we could have opened once. We tell you which situation you are in, based on what we see in the lines, before you decide anything.
Your house stays livable the whole way through.
Nobody moves out for this. The house gets split into sections, and only the section we are working on loses water, usually for a few hours while its new lines get connected. Everything else keeps running.
Evenings are what the schedule is built around. Whatever the walls look like at quitting time, the water is running again before we pack up, so dinner, dishes and showers go on like normal. Over breakfast you will hear from us which sink or tub is out of service that day. Every cut is one we marked with you before the job started.
With all the new pipe in, the system gets pressure tested while every opening is still exposed, so a weak joint shows itself where we can reach it. Only after that do we close the walls, patched smooth and ready for texture and paint.
On the final visit we open each faucet and flush each toilet with you, then point out where the new shutoffs live. A patch or fitting not right after we have gone? Call, and we come back to fix it.
Finished jobs from around the island are in our recent work around Oahu.
Other Kailua calls that tend to lead here.
A lot of Kailua repipes begin as a smaller complaint. Damp drywall with no clear source gets leak detection in Kailua first, so the wet spot is pinned down with detection tools and no wall gets opened on a guess. A line that has already burst is emergency plumbing in Kailua.
Older drain lines that have slowed to a crawl go to drain cleaning in Kailua. A heater past ten years that only gives lukewarm water is a job for water heater installation in Kailua.
Crossing the pali for a repipe in Lanikai or Kailua town is ordinary work for us. The rest of our windward work is on the Kailua page, and the main repiping service page covers how we handle repipes island-wide.
Can’t tell which of these is yours? A rough account is plenty: what you noticed, where, and for how long. Send us the leak or call (808) 445-3585.
What Kailua homeowners ask us about repiping
Will the house have water overnight during a repipe?
Every night. Only the part of the house we are working on goes dry during the day, and before the crew leaves in the evening the water is running again, so toilets, showers and the kitchen work as usual until morning.
Is PEX a good choice for a house this close to the ocean?
Inside the walls and the attic, yes. The tubing itself does not corrode, which suits a beach-town house. PEX does not like sunlight, so we keep it out of exposed outdoor runs, and any metal fittings or outside connections get chosen and placed with the salt air in mind.
Why replace the pipe instead of fixing leaks as they come up?
If a leak keeps coming back at one fitting, a repair usually solves it. When leaks keep turning up in different places on old pipe, along with falling pressure or discolored water, each repair only buys time on a system that is wearing out everywhere. We will tell you which one you are looking at.
Our kitchen line is the only one giving trouble. Does the whole house need new pipe?
Not necessarily. Aging lines in older Kailua homes rarely wear out evenly, and one run can fail while another still has years left. We check the pipe the new section would connect to. If that is sound, a partial repipe makes sense. If it is just as tired, you hear it from us up front, before we end up opening walls twice.
How much wall gets opened, and who fixes it?
Less than most people picture. We mark the openings together on a walk-through before any cutting, keep them small and put them where a patch sits flat. Once the new pipe passes its pressure test, we close them ourselves, smooth and ready for texture and paint.
Is a repipe permitted work, and are you licensed for it?
It is, and we are. Shoreline Plumbing holds Hawaii license #37423. A licensed plumber runs the new lines to code, and filing the permit is part of our job, not yours.
Start your fix
What are the pipes doing at your place?
Tell us roughly how old the house is, how the pressure has been, and where leaks have shown up so far. We will set up a visit from that, or you can call the crew at (808) 445-3585.