Pick one and we will keep it short. Three taps and you are done.
We run calls seven days a week, and we answer the phone around the clock.
Last step. We will call you back to confirm the window.
An emergency deserves a person, not a web form sitting in an inbox. Call the shop and we pick up.
No heat, no water, an active leak, or a backed up main. These move to the front of the line, day or night, weekend or holiday.
Your request is in and somebody will call you back to confirm a window. Here is what we have:
The year a house went up tells you more about its plumbing than anything else you can see from the kerb. Here is the whole map, and how to check your own in about two minutes.
Every city page on this site opens with the share of homes built in each decade, because era is the best predictor we have of what is behind the drywall. This is the reference those pages point at.
Two systems run through a house and they are made of different things, fail differently and get replaced on different timelines. Supply is the pressurised pipe bringing water to fixtures. Drain, waste and vent is the gravity side taking it away. People say "the pipes" and mean one or the other without realising they are separate jobs.
| Built | Supply | Drain | What it does as it ages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Before 1940 | Galvanized steel, sometimes a lead service line | Cast iron | Supply bore closes with corrosion; lead service lines are a replacement job on their own terms |
| 1940s-1950s | Galvanized steel, copper toward the end | Cast iron | Falling pressure and rust-coloured water; cast iron reaching the end of its service life |
| 1960s | Copper, galvanized still common early | Cast iron | Mixed-metal joints corrode where copper meets steel |
| 1970s | Copper | Cast iron giving way to PVC | Copper pinholes; Orangeburg sewer laterals in anything pre-1972 deform and collapse |
| 1980s | Copper, and polybutylene from 1978 | PVC | Polybutylene fails suddenly rather than seeping, which is what makes it different |
| 1990s | Polybutylene until 1995, then copper and CPVC | PVC | Tail of the polybutylene window; early CPVC turns brittle |
| 2000s | Copper, CPVC, early PEX | PVC | Little structural; water heaters and fixtures reaching a first replacement |
| 2010s on | PEX | PVC | Holding up well so far; failures are usually fittings or rodent damage in crawlspaces |
Go to the water heater. The pipe coming out of the top is usually the easiest run in the house to see, and it is normally the same material as the rest of the supply.
Era is a strong indicator and nothing more. Houses get repiped, additions get built in a different decade from the original, and a 1985 build may have used copper throughout because that is what the plumber had on the truck. Anyone who tells you what is in your walls without looking is guessing. This page is for narrowing down what to go and check.
Because the question comes up on nearly every quote, and because the honest version helps whether or not you call us. If you look at your water heater and find PEX, you have saved yourself a service call. We would rather be the people who told you that. Virginia Class A contractor license #2705131990, verifiable through Virginia DPOR.
Send us a photo of the pipe at your water heater. We will tell you what it is.
