Whole-Home Repipes in Sherwood, OR

A whole-home repipe replaces all the water supply lines in your house at once: hot, cold, and (when it’s the right call) the main coming in from the meter. It’s a bigger job than swapping out one bad section, and the reason people do it is usually one of three. Their galvanized steel from the 1950s and 60s is finally giving up. Their polybutylene from the 1980s has started leaking out of nowhere. Or their copper from the 1970s has eaten through from inside, often pinhole leaks that show up in two or three places within a year.

We repipe homes across Sherwood, Tualatin, Tigard, Wilsonville, Beaverton, and Newberg in either copper (Type L) or PEX-A, depending on what makes sense for the house and the budget.

Not every leak means you need a whole-home repipe. Most pipe leaks we see are one bad joint or one stretch of bad pipe, and the fix is a section repair. See our pipe repair page for that work.

A whole-home repipe is the right call when:

• You have three or more pinhole leaks in copper within 12 months. Once copper starts pinholing, the rest of the system isn’t far behind. Patching one at a time turns into a slow drip of $400-800 service calls, and you eventually pay more in repairs than the repipe would have cost.
• Your house still has galvanized steel supply lines. Galvanized rusts from the inside. Even if it’s not leaking today, the interior diameter has been narrowing for decades, which is why your shower pressure feels weak and your hot water takes forever to reach the upstairs bathroom. A pressure test will tell you how far gone it is.
• You have polybutylene. Polybutylene (gray plastic, common in homes built between 1978 and 1995) fails when chlorinated municipal water flexes the polymer over time. The failures are sudden, often at the fittings. If you have it, you’re not going to outlast it.
• You’re remodeling and the walls are open anyway. This is the cheapest possible repipe because the demo is already done. If you’re doing a bathroom or kitchen remodel, it’s worth asking us to scope the rest of the house at the same time.

We install both, and the right answer depends on the house and how long you plan to be in it.

Copper (Type L). The traditional choice. Lasts 50 to 70 years in most Oregon water conditions. More expensive than PEX, both in material and labor (every joint is soldered or pressed). Holds up to abuse and UV exposure where PEX wouldn’t. We use Type L (not Type M) for whole-home work because the wall thickness is meaningfully better for long-term reliability.

PEX-A. The modern choice for whole-home repipes. Cheaper material, much faster install (fewer fittings, no soldering), better freeze tolerance (PEX can stretch a little when water freezes; copper splits). The good PEX-A brands have 25-year warranties and have been in U.S. service since the early 2000s with no widespread failure mode. We use Uponor PEX-A with cold-expansion fittings, which is the system with the longest track record.

A rough cost frame: PEX whole-home is usually in the $4,000-9,000 range for a 1,500-2,500 sq ft single-story or split-level. Copper runs 30-50% more, and adding a finished basement or a multi-story changes both. We give you a written quote after walking the house, never on the phone.

A whole-home repipe takes 3 to 5 days in most homes. The phases:

1. Walkthrough and quote. We map every fixture, the routing of the existing lines, the manifold or trunk location, and where the access points are.
2. Cut and run. New lines go in through ceilings, soffits, and wall cavities. We pull as much from above (attic) as we can to minimize drywall damage.
3. Tie-in to fixtures and the water heater. Every connection gets pressure-tested before we close walls.
4. Pressure test the whole system. Held at 100 psi for the inspector. We won’t close walls until it holds.
5. Inspection and close-up. Permit is pulled before we start; inspection happens before sheetrock goes back. We coordinate the drywall patch as part of the job (texture and paint are a separate line item; most homeowners use their own painter).

If your water heater is older than 10 years, this is the moment to replace it. The new repipe will outlive the old tank, and doing both at once saves a service call later. See our water heater page for that part of the conversation.

We don’t repipe with CPVC, and we’ll talk you out of anyone who recommends it. CPVC is brittle, fails at joints under thermal cycling, and is a hard no on a long-life repipe.

We also don’t do partial repipes that try to “just replace the bad section” of a galvanized system. You pay almost as much for the disruption, and the rest of the system still rusts. If the recommendation is “replace half the house and we’ll see how the other half does,” that’s a sign someone’s quoting around the real fix.

Sherwood Plumbing is at 22800 SW Conifer Drive, covering a 25-mile radius across Washington County with parts of Clackamas and Yamhill:

• Sherwood
• Tualatin
• Tigard
• Wilsonville
• Beaverton
• Newberg

Sherwood Plumbing has been running since 2013 under Devin Drew Adams. We’re headquartered in Sherwood, the only plumbing company actually based in town. Our techs know the housing stock around here: the 1970s gas tank in a Sherwood ranch, the 2015 tankless in a Villebois build, the electric tank in a Cedar Hills postwar home. That local knowledge is the difference between a diagnosis that takes 20 minutes and one that takes two hours.

We carry $1,000,000 in general liability through Contractors Bonding & Insurance. Oregon CCB license #200851 (Plumbing, Residential RGC General Contractor). PB1381 with the Oregon Building Codes Division. $25,000 surety bond. 220 Google reviews at 4.7 stars.