Most whole-home repipes run three to five days. A small house with accessible plumbing can finish in two; a large or multi-story home, or one where the pipe routing is difficult, can take a week or more. The variable is almost never the pipe itself — it is access.

What Determines the Timeline

Two houses of identical square footage can differ by days depending on a handful of factors:

  • Number of fixtures. Every sink, toilet, tub, shower, hose bib, and appliance connection is a termination point. Fixture count predicts labor far better than square footage does.
  • Access. A home with an accessible attic and open crawlspace is the best case. A slab foundation with lines buried in concrete is the hardest, because the new routing has to go overhead through the attic and down interior walls.
  • Stories. Two-story homes require vertical runs through walls between floors, which means more openings and more patching.
  • Wall construction. Drywall is straightforward. Plaster, tile, and stone are considerably slower and more delicate.
  • Scope. Supply lines only is faster than supply plus drain replacement.

How the Days Break Down

A typical repiping project follows the same rhythm.

Day one is protection and access — covering floors and furniture, then opening the specific wall and ceiling sections where connections have to be made. We open the minimum necessary, in planned locations, rather than making it up as we go.

The middle days are the actual pipe work: running new lines from the main through the house to every fixture, then tying in. Water is typically off during working hours and restored each evening in most homes. That is a detail worth asking any contractor about, because it determines whether you can stay in the house.

The final day is pressure testing, inspection, and patching. Drywall repair and texture are usually included; final paint matching is sometimes a separate trade depending on your finishes.

Living in the House During the Work

Most families stay put. It is disruptive but manageable, and knowing the pattern in advance helps: water off during the day, on at night, some noise, some dust, and crews in and out.

Plan around the days when your primary bathroom is affected. If you work from home, expect drilling. If you have small children or pets, we will talk through containment before we start.

Why Rushing Is the Wrong Goal

Repiping is not a job where speed is the mark of quality. A crew that finishes a whole house in a day and a half either skipped the pressure test, took shortcuts on strapping and support, or left connections in places that will be unreachable later.

Proper support spacing prevents the water hammer and rattling that make a new system sound worse than the old one. Correct routing keeps lines out of unconditioned attic space wherever possible — which matters enormously here, because attic runs are what burst during Hill Country freezes. Getting that routing right is worth an extra day.

Signs You Are Past Repair and Into Repiping

If you are still deciding, the honest test is repair frequency. A single failure is a water line repair. A third failure in two years on the same aging galvanized or polybutylene system means you are paying repeatedly to postpone the inevitable.

Other indicators: discolored water at multiple fixtures, pressure that has steadily declined throughout the house, visible corrosion at every accessible connection, and repeated leak detection calls that keep finding new failures in different locations. A plumbing inspection will tell you plainly which category you are in.

Planning the Project

Repiping pairs naturally with other work. If a bathroom remodel is on the horizon, doing it alongside the repipe saves opening the same walls twice. The same is true for replacing aging fixtures or a water heater that is near the end of its life.

We provide a written schedule before starting, so you know which days affect which parts of the house. Financing is available, and estimates are free.

We repipe homes across Fredericksburg, Kerrville, Boerne, Comfort, and the surrounding Hill Country. To schedule a consultation, contact 72 Degrees or call (830) 240-1835.