A whole house repipe in 2026 costs $4,500 to $15,000 for most homes, with PEX averaging around $7,000, CPVC around $4,500 to $7,500, and copper running $7,500 to $18,000 (and past $22,000 on larger floor plans). Material choice and home size set the floor; whether drywall patch and finish are included in the quote sets the ceiling.
A repipe replaces every supply line inside the house — hot and cold lines from the water heater to every sink, toilet, shower, washer, and hose bib. It does not include the buried service line from the city meter to the house (that’s a separate job covered below) and it does not include the drain-waste-vent system. PEX is the dominant 2026 default; copper still has a niche; CPVC is fading.
What a repipe really costs in 2026
Pricing below comes from 2026 contractor data reported by Angi, HomeGuide, HomeFixCostGuide, and several regional repipe specialists. Use these numbers to sanity-check bids, not as a final quote.
| Material | 1,500 sq ft Total | 2,500 sq ft Total | Per Linear Foot |
|---|---|---|---|
| PEX | $4,500–$7,500 | $7,500–$11,000 | $0.40–$2.00 |
| CPVC | $3,000–$6,500 | $5,500–$9,000 | $0.50–$1.00 |
| Copper Type L | $7,500–$12,000 | $11,000–$18,000 | $2.00–$4.00 |
Per fixture is the other useful gauge. PEX and CPVC run $750 to $1,500 per fixture installed; copper runs $1,500 to $3,000 per fixture. Count every supply point in the house — each sink, toilet, shower, tub, washing machine hookup, dishwasher line, ice maker, plus every outdoor hose bib. A four-bath flip with three sinks per bath is a different number than a four-bath ranch with one sink each.
Material is the smaller line item on the invoice. A 2,000 sq ft house typically uses 300 to 600 linear feet of pipe, which lands between $200 and $2,400 even for copper.
Labor is most of it. Plumbers charge $80 to $130 per hour for general work, with major-metro and emergency rates pushing $200. Labor runs 60 to 70% of a typical repipe invoice. A two-plumber crew finishes piping a 2,000 sq ft home in two to three days; pressure testing and inspection add another day before the walls can close back up. The remaining 30 to 40% of the bill covers fittings, manifolds, permits, and the finish work the plumber may or may not include in the quote.
Permits. $50 to $500 depending on jurisdiction. Major California and Florida metros sit at the higher end; rural counties often come in at $100 or under. Some plumbers bake permits into the quote; others bill at-cost after the fact, which can sting when an inspector kicks something back.
PEX vs CPVC vs copper: the real material call
Lifespan rarely decides this anymore. All three materials will outlast most owners’ time in the house. What separates them is install speed against fitting reliability against the room left in the budget for everything else.
PEX
The default for 80% of repipes in 2026. Cross-linked polyethylene tubing comes off a coil, bends around obstacles, and connects with either crimp rings or cold-expansion fittings (cinch clamps are the budget alternative). Install time runs roughly half what copper takes because every elbow and tee a plumber would have soldered in copper becomes a flexed bend with no fitting at all. Rated for 40 to 50 years in residential service with manufacturer warranties up to 25 years. Uponor’s transferable warranty is the gold standard when paired with their ProPEX expansion fittings.
The two real PEX gotchas: it cannot run in direct sunlight (UV degrades it within a few years, so any garage or attic run with skylight exposure needs sleeving), and rodents will chew it. Garages and unfinished basements with mice problems get copper stub-ups at the wall penetrations.
For the deep-dive on PEX-A vs PEX-B vs PEX-C, manifold versus trunk-and-branch layout, and Uponor versus Viega fittings, see the PEX repipe cost guide .
CPVC
Chlorinated polyvinyl chloride pipe. Joined with solvent cement (the orange or grey glue), so every connection is a glued joint that becomes one piece of plastic. Cheaper than copper, slower than PEX, and brittle as it ages — by 20 years it will crack if you bump it during HVAC work. Common in southeastern and mid-Atlantic markets through the 1990s and 2000s; pros there still pitch it.
The hidden cost with CPVC is the labor sensitivity of glued joints. One incomplete solvent weld looks fine at the pressure test and starts seeping six months later when the cement finishes curing. A repipe specialist who’s done a hundred CPVC jobs gets 99% perfect joints; a generalist gets 95%, and that 5% means a leak in your wall in 2027.
Copper
Type L hard copper soldered with lead-free solder. The premium choice and the only material a quality-conscious buyer recognizes at resale. Lasts 50-plus years in neutral water; less in acidic water (under pH 6.5) where pinhole leaks become routine after 20 years.
Avoid Type M for repipes. Type M’s thinner wall (about 0.028 inches at 1/2-inch nominal versus Type L’s 0.040 inches) is what got pinholed everywhere in the 1990s, and most plumbers know better in 2026, but a few cheap quotes still spec it. Demand Type L in writing.
The case for copper today: exposed runs in mechanical rooms where appearance matters, hot-water lines that share a chase with electrical (PEX is fine but copper handles fault heat better), and any owner who plans to sell to an inspector who’ll mark “plastic plumbing” as a downgrade.
The case against: 2x the bill, twice the time on site, and a metal that fails by pinhole the moment your municipal water chemistry shifts.
What’s separate from this job
Several jobs share the “repipe” word in homeowner searches but are priced separately and dispatched on different days.
- Main water service line. The buried pipe from the city meter at the curb to your house. Repair runs $350 to $1,700; full replacement runs $1,500 to $5,000 (more if the line crosses a driveway). Trenchless pipe bursting at $75 to $150 per linear foot beats traditional dig at $100 to $200 per linear foot when the run is straight. Permit alone is $150 to $500.
- Sewer and drain lines. The black or cast iron lines that take wastewater out. Different pipe, different crew, different scope. See the trenchless sewer replacement guide for that side of the system.
- Gas lines. Black-iron or CSST gas piping is its own permitted job, often dispatched alongside an HVAC or water-heater swap rather than a supply repipe.
- Slab and ceiling leaks under a still-functional system. A localized failure in otherwise healthy pipe doesn’t justify replacing the whole house. The slab leak repair guide covers when spot-repair makes sense and when the cumulative cost of patches starts pushing you toward replacement instead.
If your goal is to fix one leak, you don’t need a full replacement. If you’ve fixed two leaks in 18 months on a system over 30 years old, the math has already caught up.
What a base quote often skips
Read every estimate for these line items. Their absence is where bids look cheap on paper and blow up at invoice time.
- Drywall patch and texture. Repipe access requires cutting open walls and ceilings, typically 30 to 50 holes in a 2,000 sq ft house. Patching, taping, sanding, and texture-matching adds $400 to $1,000. Some repipe companies include this; many stop at the plumbing rough-in.
- Paint. Touch-up paint after texture is almost never included. Plan another $300 to $800 for a painter, or expect visible repair zones.
- Tile and stone access. Showers and tub surrounds opened for repipe add real cost. A tile setter to demo and reset a section runs $300 to $1,200 per access point. Bypass via wall cavity or attic when possible.
- Old pipe removal. Most repipes leave the old copper or polybutylene in the walls as inert material. Demolition and haul-off adds $500 to $1,500. Almost never worth doing for plumbing reasons alone.
- Hose bibs, fridge line, washing machine box. Older homes have these in the same aging copper. Add $75 to $200 each if not on the quote.
When a repipe is the right call now
Four triggers move “someday” to “this quarter.”
- Galvanized steel anywhere in the house. If your home was built before 1960 and you see grey-painted steel pipe at the water heater or under the kitchen sink, the inside of those pipes has narrowed by half from rust scale, and your water pressure has been quietly losing ground for years. Galvanized fails internally before it fails outwardly — the leak shows up after the pressure drop that nobody noticed.
- Polybutylene (roughly 1978 through the late 1990s). The Cox v. Shell class action settled for around $1 billion in the late 1990s, but the pipes are still in millions of U.S. homes. Insurance carriers — Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance most aggressively — refuse to renew policies on polybutylene homes. The repipe is cheaper than losing coverage or paying surcharge premiums; some Florida quotes now exceed the cost of a full repipe in a single year.
- Two pinhole leaks in the same copper system. Once water chemistry has thinned your copper to foil at one joint, the next leak is on its way. Three spot repairs at $1,500 each is $4,500 spent without a single new pipe, and the problem isn’t solved. The same money started a permanent PEX repipe.
- You’re already gutting walls. A whole-house remodel or any major drywall demo (a kitchen plus master bath remodel counts) means the access is free. Repiping during a remodel costs 20 to 35% less than scheduling the same job stand-alone. Decide before the drywaller closes the walls back up.
A weaker fifth case: discolored hot water from one faucet, or a single chronic drip. These usually point to localized failure or a bad shutoff valve. Diagnose first, repipe only when the system pattern is clear.
Picking a repipe contractor
Four criteria that separate repipe specialists from the cheapest-bid trap:
- Repipe specialty, not general plumbing. Companies that do repipes weekly will quote faster, finish in fewer days, and own the patch crew in-house. A general plumber who does one repipe a quarter learns on your house.
- Itemized scope. Material (PEX brand and type, or copper type), connection method, layout, drywall patch level, permit handling, fixture replacements. One lump-sum number is hiding markup somewhere.
- License plus active insurance, verified. Look up the license number on the state board directly (California: CSLB C-36; Texas: TSBPE; Florida: CILB). Don’t accept a screenshot of a card. Bond status is harder to fake than insurance and worth confirming separately.
- Manufacturer warranty registration. If the contractor uses Uponor or Viega PEX, the transferable warranty has to be registered in the homeowner’s name. Ask for the registration confirmation.
The cheapest bid often skips drywall finish, uses generic fittings on no-name pipe, and is from a plumber who’ll be off your project the moment a higher-paying emergency call lands. The middle bid from a specialist is almost always the right one.
For pricing context on related work, see the PEX repipe deep-dive for material specifics and the slab leak repair guide for spot-fix economics. National pricing here was cross-referenced against Angi’s 2026 repipe data and HomeGuide’s 2026 plumbing replacement guide .