- A typical whole-house PEX repipe in Orange County runs right around $15,800 as of September 2026, from our own completed jobs, not a national estimate.
- Most homes we repiped this year landed between about $13,000 and $18,000. Larger two-story homes with three and a half or four bathrooms run from about $18,000 into the low $20,000s. Copper runs roughly 55 percent more.
- Our price includes the permit, the city inspection, and patch and texture on every wall we open. Paint is quoted separately.
- A reroute is the smaller fix, and sometimes the right one. About one in eight homeowners we see for a leak repair or reroute later choose a whole-house repipe.
If you're reading this, you've probably already had the conversation. A pinhole leak, maybe two. A plumber who said "you should think about repiping." Now you want to know what that costs before anyone shows up with a clipboard.
Here's the straight answer. Most of the homes we repiped this year landed between about $13,000 and $18,000 for a whole-house PEX repipe, with a typical job right around $15,800. That's as of September 2026, from our own invoices, not a calculator or a national average.
We've done whole-house repiping in Orange County on more than 780 homes since 2020, most of them three and four bedroom tract homes from the 1970s and 80s in Mission Viejo, Lake Forest, Rancho Santa Margarita and Irvine. That's the home behind every number here.
What a whole-house repipe typically costs in Orange County.
We're not hiding the number. If it helps you prepare, it's yours.
Orange County, updated September 2026. Most of the homes we repiped this year landed between about $13,000 and $18,000 for a whole-house PEX repipe, with a typical job right around $15,800. Most were single-story homes with two or three bathrooms. Larger two-story homes with three and a half or four bathrooms run from about $18,000 into the low $20,000s, and copper runs roughly 55 percent more. Every number includes the permit, the city inspection, and patch and texture.
The house sets the price, not the plumber. Our job is to count it honestly and put it in writing before we touch a wall.
Every figure here comes from whole-house repipes we completed in Orange County from January through August 2026, counted once per home.
What moves the number.
A lot of the homes around here were built in the same era, so the price clusters. When a quote lands outside that band, it's almost always one of these.
| What we look at | Why it matters | Which way it moves |
|---|---|---|
| Square footage and layout | More pipe, longer runs, more openings to patch. | The biggest swing. |
| Bathrooms and fixture count | Every sink, shower, toilet, tub, hose bib and water heater gets its own new line, hot and cold. | The biggest swing after size. A standard bathroom (one sink, one toilet, one tub or shower) adds about $2,500 to $3,500. A master bath with a dual vanity, a tub and a separate shower adds more, because it has more lines. |
| One story or two | Second-floor lines cross more ceilings and walls. | Adds. This is what pushes three and four bath homes into the low $20,000s. |
| Slab or raised foundation | Most south-county tracts sit on a slab, so new lines run through the attic. | About the same either way. The one exception is a slab home with a plumbed kitchen island, where we first try to feed new pipe through the old line and sometimes have to open concrete. |
| Custom finishes | Wallpaper you don't want touched, wainscoting, cabinets built into the wall. | Adds when it forces us to route through stucco instead of drywall. |
| Wall finish | Patch and texture are in. Paint is quoted with the project if you want it. | The one optional line. |
| Material | Copper costs more per foot, and every turn is a soldered joint. | Copper adds roughly 55 percent. |
That's the whole method. We count the fixtures, we count the lines, and we do the math. A sink is a hot line and a cold line. A toilet is one cold line. A pot filler, a prep sink and a fridge with an ice line all count. Then you get one flat-rate price in writing that doesn't change in the middle of the job.
Material is a decision, not just a line item, so read copper vs PEX for your repipe before you settle it.
What that price actually buys: the invoice, line by line.
Two repipe quotes look different mostly because of what's inside them. One covers the pipe and the holes. Another covers the permit, the inspection, the patch, the texture and the valves too. Here's what ours includes.
| Line item | In a standard whole-house repipe with us |
|---|---|
| Permit | Included. We pull it with your city. |
| City inspection | Included. We don't close a wall until it passes. |
| Pipe, fittings and valves | Uponor PEX-A with polyalloy (PPSU) fittings, and new quarter-turn shutoff valves at the fixtures. |
| Drywall patch and texture | Included after the inspection, matched to the wall around it. |
| Paint | Quoted separately. Some homeowners have a painter they like. |
| Warranty | Uponor backs PEX-A with a 25-year manufacturer's warranty. Our workmanship warranty comes in writing with the quote. |
| Cleanup and haul-away | Included. |
On homes built before 1978, there's one more step before anyone cuts drywall. A third-party environmental company takes samples of the drywall and tests for lead and asbestos. About one in eight of those homes tests positive. When that happens, we don't cut the walls. We mark and number exactly where the openings need to be, and an abatement company makes the cuts in one visit. Testing and abatement are billed separately from the repipe, and when a leak has already opened an insurance claim, they're usually covered by it.
How repipe prices compare across four Orange County cities.
Why does a repipe in Irvine quote higher than one in Mission Viejo? It isn't the zip code. It's the house. Here's the typical whole-house repipe in our four biggest cities over the two years ending July 2026. This year's typical job sits a little above each one, so read them for the pattern, not the exact dollar. Build years are from county parcel records for the homes we repiped.
| City | Typical repipe, two years ending July 2026 | The homes |
|---|---|---|
| Mission Viejo | About $13,000 | Single-story 1970s slab tracts, typical build year 1976, nearly nine in ten built 1969 to 1986. More than 140 homes since 2020. |
| Rancho Santa Margarita | About $13,000 | A decade younger, almost all built 1986 to 1990. More than 110 homes since 2020. |
| Lake Forest | About $13,900 | The original El Toro tracts, typical build year 1978. More than 130 homes since 2020. |
| Irvine | About $15,000 | The 70s and 80s villages, typical build year 1979. Bigger floor plans, more bathrooms. |
Streets have patterns too. Nearly one in five homes we repipe is on a street where we'd already repiped another, usually within 18 months. Five homes on Via Contento in Rancho Santa Margarita. Four each on Anacapa Court and Monserrat Place in Lake Forest. Same builder, same year, same pipe. If a neighbor with your floor plan just repiped, their number beats any national chart. Not sure what's in your walls? Start with which pipes are in your house, by the year it was built.
Why coastal and custom homes usually run higher.
Newport Beach, Coto de Caza, San Clemente and Dana Point all ran $20,000 and up in our 2026 records. That isn't a coastal surcharge. Nobody pays more for the view. Those are bigger jobs: two stories, four bathrooms, stucco with more hose bibs and more openings to patch, slab access that takes longer, often a custom floor plan. Count the fixtures and the ceilings and the price explains itself.
It's pretty simple: when you have more plumbing, it costs more, and custom homes sometimes mean custom pricing. A few of our customers in Newport Beach have single-story homes with no attic at all. None. That's not a problem, it's just different. In most homes we count the fixtures and run the new lines through the attic. In a home with no attic, we end up going through stucco instead of drywall, and that workload is a different job at a different price.
No two homes bid the same, so treat any repipe price given over the phone as a guess, including a "starting at" number. A real quote needs someone in your house counting fixtures and checking the attic, the foundation and the pipe in the walls. That's why we don't publish a minimum.
Why some repipe quotes run over $25,000.
Most of the time, the answer is the house, not the plumber.
Picture a two-story home in Coto de Caza or Newport Beach: four bathrooms, a hose bib on every side, a slab, stucco outside. In PEX, that home runs into the low $20,000s with us, because it has close to twice the fixtures and ceilings of the Mission Viejo ranch behind our typical number. Now put copper in it. Copper costs far more per foot than it did two years ago, and every turn is a soldered joint. On that home, copper lands around $26,000 to $32,000, all costs included.
So a quote over $25,000 isn't automatically a problem. Is it a large two-story home with three or four bathrooms? Is it copper? Does it include the permit, the inspection, and patch and texture? Three yeses, and the quote is probably honest. A single-story two-bath home in PEX at that number, and you should ask what's in it and get a second written price.
What a $6,000 to $12,000 quote usually leaves out.
A whole-house repipe quote of $6,000 to $12,000 in Orange County today usually isn't the same job. Ask what happens to the walls; often the low number covers the pipe and the holes, and patch, texture and paint are on you. Ask who pulls the permit, whether an inspector sees the work, whether new shutoff valves are in the price, and whether the crew works for the company on the quote. A good contractor answers all of that without blinking, and the answers usually explain the gap.
The leak detection fee, and how it applies to your repipe.
In the last three years, about half the homes we've repiped started with a leak detection visit. Someone heard water behind a wall, or the bill jumped, or a warm spot showed up on the tile. We found the leak, and the conversation turned to the rest of the pipes, usually within about a week.
That visit runs $325 to $489, and it's a separate charge from the repair or the repipe. We get asked to fold it into the job, and we understand why. Here's our honest answer: finding a leak is real work. Moisture meters, thermal imaging and acoustic listening equipment, and a plumber who knows how to read them, pinpointing the problem before anyone recommends anything. That's what lets us offer you a reroute or a repipe as real options instead of guesses. When a leak has opened an insurance claim, the detection fee is often reimbursed as part of it.
The estimate visit is where the number becomes real. We walk every room, count the fixtures, check the attic and the foundation, and confirm what's in the walls. Ken R. put it simply in August 2025: "He took pictures throughout the house and later sent us estimate."
Reroute or repipe: when the smaller fix makes sense.
Not every leak means a repipe, and we'll say so. There are three sizes of fix.
| The fix | What it is | What it usually runs | When it's the right call |
|---|---|---|---|
| Repair | Fix the one leaking section. | The smallest number. | First leak, sound pipe everywhere else. |
| Reroute | Abandon one leaking slab line and run a new one overhead. | About $1,200 to $3,200. | One slab leak, the rest of the copper holding. |
| Whole-house repipe | Replace every water line, once. | About $13,000 to $19,000 for most homes this year. | Second leak, same-era pipe throughout, or walls already opening for a remodel. |
Here's our rule of thumb at the kitchen table. First leak, and the rest of the copper looks sound? Fix it or reroute it. Second leak in a few years? The pipe is telling you something. Every line in that house went in the same week, from the same spool, and has met the same water for forty-some years. Fixing one line buys time. It doesn't change the age of the others. Either way, you'll get every option from us with the reasons behind it, and the choice stays yours. If the right answer is a repipe and the timing is hard, ask about payment options. Why that copper springs pinholes here is its own story, told in why copper pinhole leaks happen in Orange County.
About one in eight of the homeowners we see for a leak repair or reroute go on to a whole-house repipe, and roughly half decide within the same month. Before you approve a reroute, ask to see the section they took out, and ask whether the rest of the house is the same pipe from the same year.
From the FieldAndy is a real estate agent who manages a property one of our own plumbers rents, which is how he found us. His first call was a copper line leaking from the second story onto the top of the water heater. The heater and the furnace survived, but the stand and the walls around them were soaked, so it turned into an insurance claim, a remediation, and a lot of stress. We fixed the leak and everything went back to normal.
A couple of years later Andy called again. Another leak. This time he didn't want a leak detection. He didn't want options. "Just come get rid of all these pipes." So that's what we did. Most homeowners are like Andy by the second leak: they already know what needs to happen. What they need from us is the first step, what the process looks like, and what it's going to cost. Once those are answered, moving forward feels easy.
How long a whole-house repipe takes, and why time is in the price.
On most homes, all the new pipe goes in on day one, pressure tested and back on before the crew leaves. We never leave a house without water. The city inspection comes next, sometimes with a day between for the permit office, and then the crew returns for a day of drywall patch and texture. Large homes with a lot of bathrooms can add a day of pipe work and a day of drywall, and we know that before we start. Copper takes longer, because every turn is a soldered joint. Time is in the price because a crew day is what you're buying, and the inspection sits between the pipe work and the drywall, so patch and texture come back as their own visit. The full day-by-day, including whether you can stay home, is in the planning guide.
How to compare three repipe quotes.
Get three. Not one, not seven. Three quotes show you where the market is, and the differences teach you what to ask.
- Make sure every quote came from a visit. Homeowners who post their bids online notice the same thing: the middle bids walked the house, the outliers phoned it in.
- Line up what's included. Permit, inspection, patch, texture, paint, valves, warranty. A $4,000 gap is often the drywall.
- Ask how the number was built. Counting fixtures is fair. It only feels like a trick when nobody explains it. Ask for one flat-rate price in writing.
- Ask who's on the crew, licensed plumbers on the payroll or a crew hired by the job, and get the warranty in writing, material and workmanship, in years.
- Be careful with a deadline. A real price doesn't expire on Friday.
The homeowners who chose us weren't always the lowest bid. Maria B. wrote in June 2022, after her repipe in Talega, San Clemente: "They may not be the cheapest option out there, but the quality + customer service are worth it to us." Other times we were the low bid. The price depends on the house, and the visit is where you find out.
We've won jobs against the repipe franchises on the day they bid, and some homeowners have gone with a lower number. Either way, we'd rather you compare.
The only repipe price that means anything is the one written for your house, and getting it costs nothing. We'll walk every room, count the fixtures, check the attic and the foundation, and tell you what's in the walls. Then you get one flat-rate number in writing, permit, inspection, patch and texture included. The on-site estimate is free, and we prefer it that way. If spreading the cost out matters, ask about payment options. Call (949) 328-6002.
Schedule a free estimateFrequently Asked Questions
Most of the homes we repiped this year landed between about $13,000 and $18,000 for a whole-house PEX repipe, with a typical job right around $15,800, as of September 2026. Larger two-story homes run into the low $20,000s, and copper runs roughly 55 percent more. Those numbers come from our own completed Orange County jobs and include the permit, the inspection, and patch and texture.
Mostly because they aren't quoting the same job. One includes the permit, the city inspection, patch and texture; another covers the pipe and the holes. One counted your fixtures in person; another guessed from a phone call. Line up what's included before you compare totals.
Yes, when it's explained. Every fixture gets its own new lines, hot and cold, so counting the lines is the honest way to size the job. Ask for the count, and ask for the total as one flat-rate price in writing.
In the short run, yes. A reroute runs about $1,200 to $3,200 and fixes the one line that's leaking. A whole-house repipe replaces every line once. First leak with sound pipe elsewhere, reroute. Second leak, and the math usually favors doing it once.
No. The leak detection visit runs $325 to $489 and is billed on its own, because finding the leak is real work with real equipment, and it's what makes a reroute or a repipe a real option instead of a guess. When the leak has opened an insurance claim, the fee is often reimbursed. In the last three years, about half the homes we've repiped started with that visit.
On most homes the new pipe goes in on day one and the water is back on that evening. The city inspection comes next, then a day of drywall patch and texture. Large homes can add a day of each. Copper takes longer. The water is off only during working hours.
Usually not the repipe itself. Most policies treat replacing old pipe as maintenance, while the sudden damage from a leak is often covered. Every policy reads differently, so check yours. We wrote a plain-English guide to what California policies tend to cover on slab leaks.
The bottom line.
As of September 2026, a whole-house PEX repipe on a typical Orange County home runs right around $15,800, and most land between about $13,000 and $18,000. Every number includes the permit, the city inspection, and patch and texture. Paint is the only line we quote separately.
We can't price your house from this page, and we won't pretend to. We can come out, count it honestly, and put one number in writing. Call (949) 328-6002 or schedule a visit for a straight answer on what your home actually needs.
