A whole-home repipe is the largest plumbing bill most Las Vegas homeowners ever get, and it is the one most often quoted without explanation. Two licensed contractors can look at the same house and come back $15,000 apart, both of them honest.
Here is the short version, before the detail.
- Budget $11,000 to $42,000 for a whole-home repipe here, and understand that the spread is about access, not about greed.
- A hot-side-only repipe starts around $7,500 and solves most of what people actually call about.
- Caliche is why the national average does not apply. The cemented desert layer under this valley is the reason Las Vegas has no basements, and the reason anything buried costs more here.
- If your house was built between 1978 and 1995, find out what your pipe is made of before you spend anything. Polybutylene was standard in that window and it fails from the inside.
- Plan on three to five days in the house, not one.
The words a quote will use
- Repipe
- Replacing the water supply lines inside a house, from where the main enters to every fixture. It does not mean the drains, which are a separate system and a separate price.
- PEX
- Cross-linked polyethylene. Flexible plastic tubing, the default for residential repipes today. It tolerates scale better than copper and can be routed through walls with far less demolition.
- Copper (Type L)
- Rigid copper tube, the older standard. Longer-lived in clean water, more expensive to buy and far more expensive to install because every turn is a soldered joint.
- Polybutylene
- Gray plastic supply pipe installed roughly 1978 to 1995. It degrades from the inside where it meets treated water, and it fails without warning. Insurers know this and may price your policy accordingly.
- Home run (manifold)
- A repipe layout where every fixture gets its own uninterrupted line back to a central manifold, like a breaker panel for water. More tubing, fewer joints buried in walls.
- Pinhole leak
- A small perforation in copper from the inside out. One is a repair. A third one in two years is a pattern, and the pattern is the argument for a repipe.
- Caliche
- A rock-hard layer of calcium carbonate cemented through desert soil. It is why Las Vegas houses have no basements, and why trenching here is a different job than trenching in Ohio.
- Slab-on-grade
- A house poured directly onto a concrete slab with no crawlspace. Common across the valley. It means supply lines under the floor are inside concrete, not under it.
- Rough-in inspection
- The county looks at the new pipe while the walls are still open. Fail it and the walls stay open until it passes.
What a repipe costs in Las Vegas
These are the ranges we work from, taken from our own price book rather than from a national calculator.
| Service | Typical price in Las Vegas |
|---|---|
| Whole-home water repipe (hot and cold) | $11,000 – $42,000+ |
| Hot side only repipe | $7,500 – $20,000+ |
| Cold side only repipe | $7,500 – $20,000+ |
| Partial repipe (2 to 3 lines) | $12,515 |
| Sewer repipe (interior drain lines) | $9,000 – $30,000+ |
Prices are typical ranges for work in the Las Vegas valley. Final pricing depends on home size, access, materials and site conditions. All prices include professional installation and a 1-year workmanship warranty unless otherwise noted. Prices shown reflect a 10% buffer above base pricing. Customer-provided item pricing reflects installation labor only. Emergency and after-hours rates may apply.
Note the fourth line. A partial repipe of two or three lines is priced at a single figure rather than a range because it is a defined piece of work: specific runs, known access, no discovery. The whole-home number is a range precisely because discovery is most of the job.
The last line is a different system entirely. A sewer repipe replaces the drain lines inside the house, not the supply lines, and it is priced and diagnosed its own way. If that is what you are looking at, read what sewer work costs in Las Vegas instead.
How that compares with the national average
National cost guides put a whole-home repipe at roughly $6,000 to $18,000, with complex houses running past $25,000. Our floor is higher than their floor. That is worth explaining rather than hiding.
| National guidance | Las Vegas | |
|---|---|---|
| Whole-home repipe | $6,000 to $18,000 | $11,000 to $42,000+ |
| PEX, 1,500 sq ft home | $5,500 to $11,000 | Lower end of our range, if access is good |
| Copper, 1,500 sq ft home | $12,000 to $22,000 | Upper half of our range |
| Share of the bill that is labor | About 70% | Higher, because of wall and slab access |
The national figures are not wrong. They are averaged across housing stock that mostly has basements and crawlspaces, where a plumber can reach the underside of the floor standing up. Most of this valley is slab-on-grade with stucco outside and no attic access over the additions. The pipe costs the same. Reaching it does not.
Why a Las Vegas repipe is not a national-average job
Caliche
Caliche forms when mineral-rich groundwater rises, evaporates and leaves calcium carbonate cemented through the soil. The result is a layer with the working properties of weak concrete. It is the reason homes here are built on slabs instead of over basements, and it is why any part of a repipe that goes outside or under the house takes equipment rather than a shovel.
Water that is 16 to 18 grains hard
Las Vegas Valley Water District reports valley water at about 280 ppm, which is roughly 16 grains per gallon. Henderson reports higher still. The USGS calls anything above 180 mg/L very hard, so we sit at more than one and a half times the top of the national scale. Scale builds inside supply lines, narrows them and accelerates pinhole failure in copper. It is the reason repipes happen earlier here than the pipe manufacturer's lifespan suggests. Treating the water with a whole-home softener does not save pipe that has already thinned, but it slows what happens to the new pipe. We wrote about what that does to a house in our guide to Las Vegas hard water.
Pressure that is often too high
The water district's system runs anywhere from about 30 to 100 psi depending on your elevation against the reservoir that serves you. Anything above 80 psi requires a pressure reducing valve. Plenty of valley homes run high without one, or with one that failed years ago and was never noticed. High pressure does not usually burst a pipe outright. It shortens the life of every joint, fitting and angle stop in the house at once, which is how a repipe conversation starts.
Slab-on-grade and stucco
On a slab house, supply lines that run under the floor are cast into concrete. Replacing them in place means breaking and repouring the slab. The alternative is rerouting overhead through the attic and down the walls, which is usually cheaper and always less disruptive, but it means opening walls. Outside, stucco is not drywall: it has to be cut, patched, floated and textured to match, and that is a separate trade on a separate schedule.
Do you actually need a repipe?
You probably do if the pipe is polybutylene
Polybutylene went into American homes from roughly 1978 to 1995, and Las Vegas built heavily through that window. Homes from those years make up roughly a quarter of the valley's resale market. The pipe is gray, flexible, usually stamped PB2110, and it is most often visible at the water heater or under a sink. It fails from the inside out, which means it gives no useful warning. If you have it, the question is when to repipe, not whether.
You probably do if it is galvanized steel
Galvanized supply lines corrode inward and close up. The symptom homeowners describe is pressure that fell away slowly over years, usually worst at the furthest fixture from the heater. By the time it is obvious the pipe is near the end.
You might if copper is leaking repeatedly
One pinhole leak is a repair. Two in different rooms inside two years is a pattern that says the pipe wall is thinning everywhere, and spot repairs become a subscription. This is the judgment call where a second opinion is worth paying for.
You probably do not, if it is one leak and good pressure elsewhere
A single leak in otherwise healthy copper is a repair, and a repipe quote on the back of one leak deserves a question. Our price book puts most single water leak repairs between $254 and $4,843 precisely because that is a different job. Ask what the plumber saw that made them jump from repair to replacement, and ask to see it. Leak detection is the step that answers it.
Whole-home, hot side only, or partial
Most people arrive assuming the choice is repipe or do nothing. There are three real options and they are priced very differently.
| Option | What it covers | When it is the right answer |
|---|---|---|
| Whole-home | Every supply line, hot and cold, to every fixture | Polybutylene, galvanized, or copper failing in more than one place |
| Hot side only | The hot lines from the heater out | Failures concentrated on the hot side, which is common because heat accelerates scale and corrosion |
| Cold side only | The cold lines | Less common on its own, usually a specific run damaged by something identifiable |
| Partial | Two or three named runs | A known problem in known walls, with the rest of the system sound |
Hot-side-only comes up more often than people expect. Hot water is harder on pipe than cold, so a house can have hot lines at the end of their life and cold lines with years left. A contractor who only quotes whole-home has not asked which one you need.
PEX or copper here
| PEX | Copper Type L | |
|---|---|---|
| Material cost | Low | High, and tied to the commodity price |
| Install labor | Lower: flexible, fewer joints, less wall opened | Higher: every turn is a fitting and a soldered joint |
| Scale tolerance | Better. Smooth bore, no pinhole failure mode | Scales and can perforate from the inside in hard water |
| Life in Las Vegas water | Long, with no hard-water failure mode | Shorter here than the material's reputation suggests |
| Behind a wall | Fewer buried joints, which is where leaks start | More joints, each one a potential future leak |
For a Las Vegas repipe, PEX is usually the better engineering answer and the cheaper one at the same time, which is rare. Copper still makes sense in specific spots, exposed runs in a garage for example, and good contractors mix the two rather than treating it as a religion.
How long it takes
Timelines are where quotes quietly differ. A three-day repipe and a six-day repipe are not the same product.
| Stage | Typical duration | What is happening |
|---|---|---|
| Walkthrough and quote | 1 to 2 hours | Fixture count, pipe material identified, access assessed, pressure tested |
| Permit | Same day to about a week | Pulled by the contractor, not by you |
| Day 1 | Full day | Walls opened, new lines run, water off for part of the day |
| Day 2 | Full day | Runs completed and tied in, fixtures reconnected |
| Rough-in inspection | Scheduled, usually 1 to 3 days out | County inspects open walls. Walls stay open until it passes |
| Patch, texture and paint | 1 to 3 days | Drywall and stucco repair. Often a separate crew |
Three to five days end to end is normal for a whole-home repipe in an occupied house. Anyone promising one day is either doing a partial, skipping the permit, or leaving the patching to you. All three are legitimate, but you should know which you are buying.
Permits and inspection in Clark County
A repipe requires a plumbing permit here. The fee is modest, in the region of $57 at the time of writing, and the contractor pulls it. The inspection is the part that matters: the county looks at the new pipe before the walls close.
Worth knowing, because homeowners get this backwards: repairing a leak in an existing pipe or fixture generally does not require a permit, while replacing or rearranging pipe does. That distinction is why a leak repair can happen the same afternoon and a repipe cannot.
A quote that does not mention the permit is a quote to do unpermitted work. That surfaces later, at resale, when a buyer's inspector asks why the pipe does not match the records.
What a repipe quote should itemize
- Fixture count, because that is what the price is actually built on, not square footage.
- Material and type, PEX or copper, and which is used where.
- Scope, hot only, cold only, or both, stated plainly.
- Who patches, and whether texture and paint are included or stop at bare drywall.
- The permit, named, with the inspection included.
- Pressure, what the static pressure read and whether a PRV is included.
- Water off, how many hours per day and over how many days.
- Warranty, on the pipe from the manufacturer and on the workmanship from the contractor.
Why two quotes on the same house differ by $15,000
Almost always one of five things.
- One includes patching and one does not. Drywall, texture and paint on a whole-home repipe is thousands of dollars of work, and leaving it out makes a quote look sharp.
- One is rerouting overhead, one is going through the slab. Very different jobs, same described outcome.
- One priced copper. Material and labor both rise.
- One is partial. Read the scope line, not the total.
- One skipped the permit. The cheapest quote is often the unpermitted one, and it is cheapest until you sell.
Compare scope before you compare totals. A $14,000 quote that patches and permits can be cheaper than an $11,000 quote that does neither.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does a whole-home repipe cost in Las Vegas?
Between $11,000 and $42,000 or more, depending on fixture count, pipe material and how hard the pipe is to reach. A hot-side-only repipe starts around $7,500, and a partial repipe of two or three lines runs about $12,515.
How long does a repipe take?
Three to five days in an occupied house, including the rough-in inspection and the patching afterward. The pipework itself is often two days. The inspection and the drywall are what stretch it.
Do I have to move out during a repipe?
Usually not. Water is shut off for part of each working day rather than continuously, and most crews restore service before leaving each evening. Confirm that in writing, because it is not universal.
Is PEX or copper better for a Las Vegas home?
PEX, in most cases. Our water is 16 to 18 grains hard, and scale is what ends copper's life here through pinhole leaks. PEX has no equivalent failure mode, costs less in material and takes less demolition to install.
How do I know if my house has polybutylene pipe?
Look at the water heater connections and under a bathroom sink. Polybutylene is gray, flexible and usually stamped PB2110. Houses built between 1978 and 1995 are the ones to check, and that is roughly a quarter of the valley's resale stock.
Does a repipe need a permit in Clark County?
Yes, with an inspection of the open walls before they are closed. The fee is small, around $57 at the time of writing, and your contractor pulls it. Repairing an existing leak generally does not need one, which is why that work can happen same-day.
Will a repipe fix my low water pressure?
If the cause is corroded galvanized pipe closing up, yes, and dramatically. If the cause is a failed pressure reducing valve or a problem at the meter, a repipe is an expensive way not to fix it. Have the static pressure measured before you buy a repipe for a pressure complaint.
Can I repipe just the hot water side?
Yes, and it is often the right call. Heat accelerates scale and corrosion, so hot lines routinely reach the end of their life while the cold lines still have years in them. It starts around $7,500 against $11,000 for the whole house.
Does a repipe add value when I sell?
It removes a deduction rather than adding a premium. A documented, permitted repipe answers the inspection question before a buyer asks it, and on a polybutylene house that question is otherwise a negotiation.
Getting a straight answer for your house
The honest answer to what a repipe costs is that nobody can give you one over the phone. What they can do is come out, identify your pipe material, measure your static pressure, count your fixtures and look at how the house is built, then put a fixed number in writing with the scope spelled out.
That is what we do, and the inspection is free. If the answer is that you need a repair and not a repipe, that is the answer you will get. See our repiping service for what the work involves, or book a free inspection and we will tell you which of the three options your house actually needs.
