When repairs stop making sense
Every plumbing system has a service life. For galvanized steel pipe — common in Las Vegas homes built before the 1970s — that life is often 40–50 years, and many of those homes are now well past it. For copper installed in the 1980s and 1990s, Las Vegas conditions compress that timeline considerably. At some point, patching individual leaks costs more over time than replacing the system once.
The signs that you’ve crossed that line are usually not subtle:
- Rust or brown water from hot and cold taps — iron oxide from deteriorating galvanized pipe interior
- Chronically low pressure at multiple fixtures, not just one
- Two or more pinhole leaks in the copper system within a few years
- Multiple slab leaks — a single slab leak can be repaired in place, but recurring slab leaks in different locations mean the entire embedded copper system is failing
- Widespread scale buildup visible at fixture aerators and in appliance connections
If any of these describe your home, a leak detection assessment and a repiping estimate are the honest next step.
Why Las Vegas copper fails early
Las Vegas is a uniquely difficult environment for copper supply lines. The water drawn from Lake Mead is among the hardest in the country — 600–800 ppm dissolved minerals — and while hard water alone doesn’t attack copper, the combination of hard water, slightly aggressive soil chemistry, and thermal cycling does.
More importantly, virtually all Las Vegas residential construction uses post-tension concrete slab foundations. These slabs use high-tension steel cables embedded in concrete to manage soil movement. As desert soil expands and contracts seasonally and as the slab ages, it moves — and the copper pipe embedded in or running through that slab flexes with it. Over years and decades, that repeated flexing creates fatigue cracks and pinhole leaks in the pipe wall, often well before the pipe material itself would otherwise fail.
PEX tubing handles this differently. Its flexibility is the point — it bends with slab movement instead of resisting it and cracking. It also resists scale adhesion better than copper, doesn’t corrode internally, and doesn’t react to the soil chemistry that attacks copper exteriors.
What a Drip Doctors repipe involves
We route new PEX supply lines through walls, attic spaces, and crawl areas — bypassing deteriorating pipes rather than trying to pull them out of slabs or walls where removal would cause more damage than it’s worth. The old pipe is left in place but isolated, the new PEX system is fully functional.
The job typically includes:
- New main shutoff valve if the existing one is deteriorated
- New supply lines to every fixture, appliance, and hose bib
- New angle stops (fixture shutoffs) under sinks and at toilets
- All necessary drywall patches at access points
- Pressure testing of the complete new system before we leave
- City permit and inspection — required in Clark County, and we handle it
Pricing ranges from approximately $3,000 for smaller homes to $8,000 or more for larger two-story homes with complex layouts. We provide a firm, itemized quote after a walk-through — no vague estimates, no surprises when the invoice arrives. If you’ve also had slab leaks, we’ll assess whether slab leak repair is still the right call or whether a full repipe is the better long-term value.