Repiping Florence AL — Galvanized Out, Copper or PEX In

A lot of the older housing stock around Florence still runs on galvanized steel water pipe. Galvanized was the standard for decades and it doesn't fail all at once — it rusts from the inside out. The pipe fills with scale, pressure drops across the house, the water picks up a rust tint, and eventually you get pinhole leaks at a ceiling or under a slab. When one line sprays a pinhole, the rest of the house is usually close behind (it was all installed the same week, and it all ages together). Homes built from the 70s through the mid-90s around the Shoals often carry a different problem: polybutylene supply lines. The gray plastic pipe was common in that era and turns brittle with age and chlorine exposure. It tends to fail at fittings inside walls, without much warning. If you own or are buying an 80s build, having the supply lines identified is a five-minute check that tells you a lot — the pipe is usually visible near the water heater. On materials, plain talk. Copper has been the long-term standard: rigid, proven, every joint soldered, more labor in the install. PEX is flexible tubing that runs in fewer continuous pieces, resists minor freezes, and goes in faster. Neither is a wrong answer for a Florence house — it comes down to layout, water chemistry, and how long you plan to own the home. We walk the house, explain what we'd put in our own walls and why, and you decide with real information. Here's what a repipe week looks like. Before tools come out, floors get covered and drop cloths go down. We open small access holes in drywall, in spots chosen so they patch clean, and run the new lines zone by zone. The work is phased so water comes back on in the evenings — you can shower and cook at night in the middle of the job. When the last line is switched over, the old pipe is abandoned or pulled, the whole system is pressure-tested and flushed, and the access holes get patched. Most single-family repipes run a few working days, not weeks. Sometimes a partial repipe is the smarter call. One bad run — the line to an addition, a single slab branch — can be rerouted while sound pipe stays in service. The honest test: if the remaining pipe is the same age and material, partial fixes start stacking up like a subscription. What affects the job either way is house size, fixture count, how much wall has to open, slab versus crawlspace access, and material choice. We scope it room by room so the work is clear before it starts.