A lot of Front Range homes are running on borrowed time. If your house was built before the mid-1970s, the water lines behind your walls are very likely galvanized steel — pipe that rusts shut from the inside out. If it went up between the late 1970s and the mid-1990s, there's a real chance you have polybutylene (poly-B), a gray or bluish plastic pipe that was installed in millions of homes and later became infamous for splitting and failing without warning. Neither one was built to last as long as your house, and out here — with hard, mineral-heavy water and hard freeze-thaw winters — they age even faster. A whole-home repipe replaces that failing pipe before it turns into a flooded basement.
This is the kind of job almost nobody markets, even though a huge slice of Colorado's housing stock is exactly the right age for it. Paramount Plumbing is led by Patrick Ortlieb, a licensed master plumber serving the Front Range — El Paso and Colorado Springs, Teller, Douglas, Denver metro, Larimer, and the towns in between. We repipe galvanized and poly-B homes over to modern PEX or copper, do it to code, and confirm the exact price on-site before any wall gets opened. No mystery invoices, no scare tactics. If you're seeing rusty water, dropping pressure, or you already know what's in your walls, call 719-888-3255 and let's take an honest look.
How to Tell If Your Galvanized or Poly-B Pipe Is Failing
Failing supply pipe usually shows itself long before it bursts, if you know what to look for. The classic galvanized tell is water pressure that has quietly gotten worse over the years — a shower that used to blast and now trickles, or hot water that runs weaker than cold because the hot lines corrode faster. You may also see rusty or brown-tinted water, especially first thing in the morning or after the house has sat unused; that's rust flaking off the inside of the pipe. Galvanized steel scales up internally until the opening is the diameter of a coffee stirrer, and no amount of cleaning fixes it — the pipe itself is the problem.
Polybutylene fails differently and more suddenly. Poly-B doesn't clog; it gets brittle. The pipe reacts with chlorine and other oxidants in the water supply, and over time it flakes and cracks from the inside, often at the fittings. The frustrating part is that a poly-B system can look perfectly fine right up until a fitting lets go and sprays a wall cavity or a ceiling. If you can spot gray, bluish-gray, or sometimes black flexible plastic pipe (often stamped 'PB2110') at your water heater, in the basement, or near the main shutoff, it's worth having it evaluated before it picks the timing for you.
Other warning signs cut across both: recurring pinhole leaks, water stains bleeding through drywall or ceilings, visible corrosion and flaking at threaded joints, and that constant low-pressure feeling throughout the house. One leak can be a repair. A pattern of them is your plumbing telling you the whole system is at the end of its life. If any of this sounds like your house, get a straight answer — call 719-888-3255.
PEX vs. Copper: What We Actually Repipe With in Colorado
When we repipe a home, the two materials that make sense here are PEX and copper, and the right call depends on your house, your water, and your budget. PEX is a flexible cross-linked polyester tubing that has become the workhorse of modern residential plumbing for good reason. It handles Colorado's freeze-thaw swings better than rigid pipe because it can expand slightly instead of splitting instantly, it doesn't corrode or scale up the way galvanized does, it installs with fewer fittings inside the walls, and it runs quieter. For most whole-home repipes on the Front Range, PEX is the practical, durable, cost-effective choice.
Copper still has its place. It's rigid, time-tested, and some homeowners simply prefer it for exposed runs or specific applications. The tradeoff is cost and labor — copper is more expensive material and takes longer to install because every joint is soldered — and in areas with aggressive water chemistry, copper can develop pinhole leaks of its own over decades. There's no single 'best' pipe for every home; there's the right pipe for your home. As a full-service licensed shop, we'll walk you through both honestly rather than defaulting to whatever's easiest for us.
Whichever material we run, a proper repipe is more than swapping tube. We isolate and abandon the old lines, route new pipe to every fixture, install fresh shutoffs and connections, pressure-test the system, and patch the access points we opened. Because Patrick carries a master license, the same pro who plans the repipe handles the water heater tie-ins, the main line, and any fixture work that goes with it — one accountable point of contact for the whole system. Questions on which way to go? Call 719-888-3255.
What a Whole-Home Repipe Costs on the Front Range
Let's be straight about money, because this is a real investment and you deserve honest numbers instead of a lowball that changes on-site. A whole-home repipe is priced mainly by the size and layout of the house, the number of bathrooms and fixtures, how many stories, whether we're running PEX or copper, and how accessible your walls, crawlspace, and ceilings are. A single-story home with a good crawlspace is a very different job than a finished two-story with slab and drywall everywhere.
As a realistic range, most Front Range whole-home repipes land somewhere between roughly $6,000 and $18,000, with smaller single-bath homes on the lower end and larger multi-bath or copper jobs climbing higher. Poly-B replacements sometimes run a touch lower per foot than heavy galvanized work because the old plastic is easier to abandon, but the fixture count still drives the number. Drywall patching and repainting can be part of the scope or handled separately — we'll tell you clearly what's included so there's no gray area.
Here's our promise on pricing: we confirm the exact price on-site after we've actually seen your home, and you approve that number before we open a single wall. No 'while we were in there' surprises, no padded change orders. We're not the cheapest option, and we won't pretend to be — what you get is a licensed master plumber, quality materials rated for hard Colorado water and cold winters, and a system that's done to code the first time. For a real ballpark on your specific house, call 719-888-3255.
Why a Licensed Master Plumber Matters for a Repipe
A repipe touches nearly every fixture in your home and lives inside your walls for the next several decades, so this is not the job to hand to whoever's cheapest on a marketplace app. A licensed master plumber has proven the training and experience to design a system that delivers proper pressure to every fixture at once, size the lines correctly, protect against freezing in Colorado's climate, and pull the right permits so the work passes inspection and doesn't come back to haunt you when you sell the house. Unpermitted, undersized, or sloppy pipe work behind finished walls is expensive to discover later.
Paramount is a full-service residential and light-commercial plumbing company, and we also do new construction — so repiping an existing home is squarely in our wheelhouse. Because we handle the whole system under one license, a repipe naturally folds in the related work: replacing an aging water heater at the same time, upgrading the main shutoff and pressure regulator, addressing hard-water treatment, or fixing the fixtures that never worked right on the old corroded lines. One crew, one plan, no bouncing between contractors who each blame the other.
We're also licensed, insured, and available for genuine 24/7 emergencies — because failing pipe doesn't always give you a polite heads-up. If a poly-B fitting or a rusted galvanized joint lets go at midnight, you want a real licensed plumber answering the phone, not an answering service booking you for next week. Put one number in your phone: 719-888-3255.
Repipe Now, or Wait? How to Decide
Not every old pipe needs to come out tomorrow — but there's a point where repiping is cheaper than the slow bleed of repeated repairs and water damage. If you're patching the same lines over and over, if your water quality and pressure have clearly declined, or if you already know you have poly-B and you're planning to be in the home a while, a planned repipe on your schedule beats an emergency one on the pipe's schedule. A controlled project lets us stage the work, minimize the days without water, and patch cleanly. A 2 a.m. burst does none of that.
Timing and life events matter too. Buying or selling a Front Range home built in the galvanized or poly-B era is a smart moment to get the plumbing evaluated — failing supply pipe shows up in inspections and can affect the sale. Same goes for any remodel: if walls are already open for a kitchen or bath project, that's often the most cost-effective time to replace the pipe behind them instead of paying to open those walls twice.
The honest move is to get eyes on it before you decide. We'll tell you plainly whether you're looking at a repair, a partial, or a full repipe — and we won't upsell you into a whole-home job you don't need yet. If you're weighing it, call Paramount Plumbing at 719-888-3255 and we'll give you a straight assessment of where your system actually stands.
Frequently asked
How do I know if my Colorado home has galvanized or polybutylene pipe?
Age is the first clue. Homes built before the mid-1970s often have galvanized steel supply lines, and homes built from roughly the late 1970s into the mid-1990s may have polybutylene (poly-B). Galvanized looks like dull gray threaded metal pipe and often shows rust or corrosion at the joints; poly-B is flexible gray, bluish-gray, or black plastic, frequently stamped 'PB2110,' commonly visible near the water heater or main shutoff. If you're not sure what's in your walls, we'll identify it during an on-site evaluation — call 719-888-3255.
What does a whole-home repipe cost on the Front Range?
Most Front Range whole-home repipes run roughly $6,000 to $18,000, driven by the home's size, number of bathrooms and fixtures, stories, wall and crawlspace access, and whether we use PEX or copper. Smaller single-bath homes sit at the lower end; larger multi-bath or all-copper jobs run higher. We confirm the exact price on-site after seeing your home, and you approve that number before any wall is opened — no surprise invoices.
Should I repipe with PEX or copper?
For most Colorado homes, PEX is the practical choice — it handles freeze-thaw better than rigid pipe, resists corrosion and scaling, and installs with fewer in-wall fittings. Copper is rigid, time-tested, and preferred by some homeowners for certain runs, but it costs more and takes longer to install. There's no single best pipe for every house; we'll walk you through both honestly and recommend what fits your home, water, and budget.
How long does a repipe take and will I be without water?
A typical whole-home repipe is often a one-to-several-day job depending on the size of the house and access, and water is usually off only during the active portions of the work — not the entire time. Because we plan the project rather than react to an emergency, we can stage it to minimize the days you're without water and to patch access points cleanly. We'll give you a realistic timeline when we confirm the scope on-site.
Do you handle the water heater, main line, and fixtures at the same time?
Yes. Paramount is a full-service shop led by a licensed master plumber, so a repipe naturally folds in related work — replacing an aging water heater, upgrading the main shutoff and pressure regulator, addressing hard-water treatment, and fixing fixtures that never ran right on the old corroded lines. One licensed pro handles the whole system, so there's no bouncing between contractors. Call 719-888-3255 to plan it out.