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 service line is the one pipe that feeds the whole building, and in most of Northern Virginia you own it from the meter in. What it is made of decides nearly everything about how it fails.
One pipe brings every drop into your building. When it goes you do not get a dripping faucet, you get no water, or a doubled bill, or a wet stripe down the lawn in February. Where the utility's responsibility ends and yours begins is not the same in every county we work in, and that line in the ground decides who pays.
Most people asking about a water line are really asking about lead. Fairfax Water cut its service lines of unknown material from 137,340 to 116 in a single year, out of more than 290,000 lines, using records, materials noted during routine work, customer surveys and a field-verified predictive model. The Virginia Department of Health reviewed and approved it.
The published table as of November 2025: 15 utility-owned lead lines, 2 galvanized requiring replacement, 1 customer-owned lead line, 116 still unknown. Every unknown and all 15 utility-owned lead lines sit in one neighbourhood, Belle Haven. The lone customer-owned lead line is in the City of Fairfax. Eighteen affected lines out of 290,000 is not a crisis, and we will not sell you one. Fairfax Water publishes the count.
The rest of the area reads the same. Prince William Water says every line it owns is non-lead, inventory submitted 16 October 2024, though about one in five records in its public dataset is still unknown on the customer side. Arlington's inventory found none, lead pipe has been prohibited there since 1938, and the county publishes a clean age rule: a home built on or after 1 August 1978 does not have a lead water service line. Loudoun Water's inventory, accepted by VDH, contains none. Manassas checked over 13,000 lines and found none.
Two honest caveats. Leesburg runs its own town system and was still identifying about 2,000 unknown-material lines as of August 2026, and unknown is not a synonym for lead. Alexandria has the longer history: Virginia American Water publishes that it has no lead mains, that roughly 2,641 utility-owned lines were identified in 2018 as potentially lead or unknown or presumed lead, and that the figure has since come down by 25 percent. That FAQ carries no date. The utility also holds no records on customer-owned materials, which is the half we get called about.
Flushing first. EPA says to use cold water only for drinking, cooking and baby formula, that boiling does not remove lead, and never to run hot water through a lead filter, because hot water pulls lead and copper out of plumbing materials faster. EPA publishes no universal flush time, deliberately, since it depends on whether there is a lead line at all. Arlington County's version is better: a shower, or a load of laundry, has already done it.
Then the filter, which is where money gets wasted. NSF/ANSI 42 is an aesthetic standard. It means better taste and proves nothing about lead. What you want is certified to NSF/ANSI 53 carrying a stated lead reduction claim, and EPA's guide adds Class I particulate reduction, because particulate lead is what comes loose after a line is disturbed.
That matters on the day we are in your yard. The rule counts swapping a connector, an inline meter or a meter setter as a disturbance, and its documented response is flushing plus a certified filter. So we flush before we leave. There is also a protective film inside your pipe that the utility maintains continuously. Loudoun Water publishes a minimum of 0.90 ppm orthophosphate at pH 7.0 or above for that purpose, and Fairfax Water says a corrosion inhibitor is added to limit leaching from household plumbing.
Three materials account for almost everything we dig up here, and they fail for three unrelated reasons. Knowing which one is under your grass changes what we recommend, and in one case it changes whether an inspection is even worth paying for.
Galvanized was common until the 1950s, so anything still carrying water is past seventy years old. The era is the argument, not a lifespan. We went looking for a published service life in years and there is not one. The 40 to 50 years every plumbing site quotes is absent from InterNACHI's life expectancy chart, which has no galvanized water pipe row at all, absent from EPA's distribution system paper, and absent from the Bureau of Reclamation's buried metallic pipe memorandum. One peer-reviewed paper concludes that standard galvanizing thickness alone does not ensure longevity. Act on rusty water and falling pressure, not on a birthday.
Made from 1978 to mid-1995, production ending mid-1996. Usually grey, usually stamped PB2110. Here is the part most pages skip: no test tells you a polybutylene line is still sound. Degradation starts inside, where oxidants in public water make the material scale, flake and go brittle, and InterNACHI says this cannot be detected without shutting the water off and dismantling the pipe. The Fifth Circuit records the 1995 Cox settlement, under which Shell and Hoechst contributed $950 million to replace eligible leaking systems. Plaintiffs alleged a fifty-year life had been marketed, which is an allegation rather than a finding. On a buried grey PB line we recommend replacement over monitoring, because monitoring is not a thing that exists here.
Copper has been the usual service material since the 1930s, and Type K, the thickest wall, is what goes underground. InterNACHI's chart disagrees with itself on lifespan, giving both 70 and 50 years in different rows and disclaiming the lot as guidelines. Pinholes are a separate question, and most competitor pages have it backwards. A Virginia Tech master's thesis under Marc Edwards reports that in 2004 it was unambiguously proven that water alone could eat a pinhole leak in copper tube, with no imperfection or bad installation required. Pitting is driven by chlorine and inhibited by orthophosphate. One outbreak at a large Maryland utility eventually caused leaks in 20 to 50 percent of the homes. On a second or third pinhole, read whole-house repipe.
| Material | When it went in | How it goes | Published service life |
|---|---|---|---|
| Galvanized steel | Common until the 1950s, per InterNACHI | The zinc coating, measured at 40 to 55 micrometres in peer-reviewed work, is used up. Bare steel then corrodes, tubercles grow inward off the wall, the bore narrows and the water runs rusty | None. No figure in years appears in InterNACHI's life expectancy chart, EPA's distribution system paper or the Bureau of Reclamation's buried metallic pipe memorandum. One peer-reviewed study concludes galvanizing thickness alone "does not ensure longevity" |
| Lead | Not used for water service piping since around 1950, per InterNACHI. The 1986 Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments banned materials that were not "lead free", which then meant up to 0.2% lead in solder and flux and up to 8% in pipe | Corrodes and releases lead, worst where water is acidic or low in minerals. Utilities dose a corrosion inhibitor to hold a protective film on the pipe wall | Not applicable. Fairfax Water counts 15 utility-owned and 1 customer-owned lead line out of more than 290,000 |
| Polybutylene | Manufactured 1978 to mid-1995, production ending mid-1996. Usually grey, also white, silver, black or blue. Stamped PB2110 | Oxidants in public water react with it from the inside. It scales, flakes, turns brittle and InterNACHI says it may fail without warning | No inspection clears it short of dismantling the pipe. The 1995 Cox settlement put $950 million toward replacing eligible leaking systems |
| Copper | The most common water service material since the 1930s. Type K is thickest and marked green, which is what goes underground; Type L blue, Type M red and thinnest | Pitting, driven by chlorine and inhibited by orthophosphate. A peer-reviewed study of failed tube found microbes deep inside the pits | InterNACHI's own chart gives both 50 and 70 years for copper water lines, disclaimed as guidelines rather than warranties |
| Plastic | PVC in common residential use since the 1980s | Material dependent. PEX has UV exposure limits published per manufacturer, and indirect sunlight counts toward them | PEX 40 years per InterNACHI, against a 50-year minimum extrapolated lab lifetime under ASTM F2023 from the Plastics Pipe Institute, the plastic pipe trade association. Underground PVC 60-plus years per InterNACHI, and Fairfax County says PVC may exceed 100 years. Nothing in the ground is old enough to have tested the longer figure |
Lost pressure is the most common reason anyone calls us about a new water line, and most of the time it is not the water line. We check whether the main shutoff is all the way open, whether the pressure reducing valve has drifted or silted up, whether there is a corroded galvanized section indoors, and what the utility is delivering in your zone. USGS does document hard water scale gradually narrowing a pipe, but that is rarely the first answer here. If the meter creeps with everything shut off, that is a leak detection call, not a dig.
A pressure reducing valve, or PRV, is the brass device that steps street pressure down to something fixtures tolerate. Watts, which manufactures them, treats anything above 60 psi as generally high and says codes mandate a PRV above 80 psi. Watts also calls a PRV a life-of-mortgage product, rebuilt with an inexpensive kit rather than replaced, which cuts across the trade line that it lasts ten to fifteen years and gets swapped on schedule.
The utilities publish design triggers, not the pressure at your sink. Prince William Water sets 30 psi minimum at the main, requires a booster pump where delivery at the building entrance is under 40 psi, and requires a pressure reducing device above 80 psi working pressure. Fairfax Water works to the Virginia Department of Health floor of 20 psi and says a PRV is required in new construction at 80 psi or more but not in existing homes. Loudoun Water notes most houses built after 1972 already have one. Arlington's 2014 draft master plan describes nine pressure zones and 14 pressure reducing valves against a goal of 40 to 100 psi, and the plan itself says that goal is impossible to meet everywhere given the topography. In Alexandria the tariff guarantees 20 psi as a floor and explicitly does not guarantee sufficient or uniform pressure. Not one of those is a typical household number, and nobody should quote one to you as if it were.
We will tell you what we do not know. The published method comparisons we trust are EPA's, and EPA's work is about sewers, where gravity, diameter and liners behave nothing like a pressurised water service. No equivalent published comparison for a trenchless water service exists, so we are not inventing one.
The ground does carry over. EPA's disqualifiers for bursting a pipe: sandy soil, where it relaxes onto the new pipe almost instantly and progress crawls; boulders or rock in the path; a host pipe the head cannot burst; and other utilities close enough to be hurt by the force. It also needs a pit at each end, so the honest phrase is much less digging, never no digging. What usually decides it is whatever sits on top.
Two rules govern either approach. The Virginia Residential Code requires water service pipe not less than 12 inches deep and not less than 6 inches below the frost line, and the frost depth is left to the locality under Table R301.2 rather than set by the state, so we will not print an inch figure for Woodbridge. Second, the pipe gets seen before it is covered. USBC Section 113.3 requires inspection of plumbing materials prior to concealment, and Section 113.6 requires defects corrected and reinspected first. A trench backfilled before the inspector saw it becomes your problem at resale.
Ownership is the detail people get wrong, and it is not uniform. These are the jurisdictions' own published figures, with the dates they carry.
| Where you are | Who owns what | Water service permit, as published |
|---|---|---|
| Prince William County | Prince William Water owns main to meter. You own meter to building | County plumbing permit, residential water service, new or repair or replace: $110.65 including surcharges. Fee schedule effective July 1, 2026. Inspections must be booked by 3 p.m. the working day before |
| Fairfax County | Fairfax Water owns the mains, the meters and the line up to the meter. It is not the sewer utility, and Fairfax County is not the water utility | Fairfax County Land Development Services: Water Service (New, Replacement or Repair) $77.70, against a base permit minimum of $141.75, plus a 10% technology surcharge per transaction. Effective July 1, 2026. The schedule does not say how the line item and the base fee combine, so we will not derive a total from it |
| Loudoun County (Sterling, Ashburn) | Loudoun Water owns main to meter including the corporation stop, the service pipe, the meter box and the meter. You own your side of the meter. Inside Leesburg town limits it is the Town's own system and none of this carries over | Loudoun County plumbing permit, Water service (new or replacement) $70, re-inspections $30 each. Schedule published as effective July 1, 2022 |
| Arlington County | The county runs water and sewer. Owners may still have lead on the private side; the county found none in its own system | Water Services; new, replace, repair $174 each, plus a $139 plumbing base permit fee, with a $149 minimum for one- and two-family dwellings. Effective July 1, 2026. Every permit also carries a 2% Code Academy levy and a 10% automation surcharge. Connection charges are separate: a 1-inch service with a 3/4-inch meter is $5,295, effective July 1, 2025 |
| City of Alexandria | Virginia American Water is the water utility and holds no records on customer-owned line materials | No water service line item exists on the City schedule, so we will not quote one. Published, effective July 1, 2025: $95.00 minimum permit fee, excavation permits $250 per city block, right-of-way work permits $125 each |
| City of Fairfax and Falls Church | Fairfax Water, which acquired both systems in January 2014. There is no City of Fairfax water department | City of Fairfax, FY 2026: replacement or repair $114.40, new with a tap $156.00. Falls Church, effective 1 July 2026: install water service $91.50, repair $91.50, and the City says the fee due is the fee in effect the day it is paid |
| City of Manassas | Its own utility and its own treatment plant | $75.00 flat, covering new, replacement or repair. Revised 6/24/2024 |
Under all of it sits 13VAC5-63-80 Section 108.1, which requires a permit before work on the water supply and distribution system. The same section lets the application for an emergency replacement be filed by the end of the first working day after work begins, which is what allows a broken line to be fixed on a Sunday. USBC Section 2901.1 is why one job can involve two authorities, since water supply sources are regulated outside the building code.
Virginia Class A contractor licence #2705131990. Family run, more than 40 years in the trade, based in Woodbridge. Office hours are 7:00 to 17:00, and after that Jon takes the calls himself. Call (703) 491-6542. To work out what is probably under your yard, our pipe materials by decade page goes era by era.
One call covers plumbing and HVAC. Talk to somebody who has been doing this for decades.
