Never thought I would need a repipe, with copper pipes in my house not even 35 years old. But one…read moremorning I heard the dreaded sound that struck fear in my heart. Some water running sound in the wall by the kitchen, when everything is off?! Supposedly even a small slab leak "trumpets" the sound up the pipes for sensitive (OCD?) folks like me to hear water running. Lucky I caught the sound on the first morning it started.
Quickly spent countless hours reading and learning about slab leaks.
One plumber said they can fix the leak by locating the leaking pipe and either break the slab to fix, or reroute that pipe to bypass the leaking point. Basically sounded like a partial repipe, except you leave all other pipes to an unknown fate? No way I can relax in my house knowing other copper pipes can leak too.
I quickly decided to repipe the whole house for peace of mind. Read through so many plumbers and repipe companies on Yelp, and connecting the dots after digesting all the reviews led me to Repipe Top Team. Even without too many reviews, the reviews that existed gave me confidence this was the one.
Called Mr. Miguel to come check out my house. He is super professional, very sharp, and humble yet confident. Quickly noted all the plumbing terminations and surveyed the house. It did not take long, and he promised to send an estimate the next day.
Once the project proposal arrived in the email, the decision was crystal clear. The proposal had so much details on exactly what will be done, it was organized so well that I was blown away. It was better than an engineering course lab report!
Repipe Top Team is not messing around, they only use the best products to match their great work to guarantee a great outcome.
In case you're wondering, they use Uponor Pex A, Dahl angle stops, Moen shower valves with integral stops, etc. They will repipe your entire house, and then patch up all the holes cut in your walls/ceilings/stucco. A turnkey project, except they do not handle the painting.
I did not need to get quotes from other companies as I had read about typical costs online, I knew the Repipe Top Team price was very fair.
Normal turn around is 1 day to repipe. 1 day to patch. I opted for the city permit, not sure if it was worth the trouble of doubling the # of days to be done. All city did was just a quick walk around.
Only problem I had was, I had to wait 2 long weeks to be my turn! (when you are good, you are in demand I guess)
I had a light bulb moment after a week. 80~90% of slab leaks are the hot pipe, not the cold. Why shut off the entire house and be inconvenienced with no water for toilet/washing hands. If it's the hot pipe, can just shut off the valve to the water heater!!! It worked initially, but my shut off for water heater was defective and it did not fully shutoff and still flowed very slightly. But if you have a slab leak, hopefully your water heater shutoff is good and you can have an easier wait (only turn on water heater before you need the hot water, i.e. for shower, then shut it off again)
Believe me it was a long~~~ and anxiety filled times for sure. Gave me plenty of time to clear garage and cover what I could lol.
But the day did arrive in 2025, hallelujah! Crew of 6 including Mr. Miguel arrived and they spent the first ~2 hours! just covering and taping up everything to minimize mess in the house or even the garage. During which time they also brainstormed how to most efficiently repipe the house. Then things exploded into activity with cutting, drilling, and all the hard work of repiping inside the house, new house water main, breaking stucco, etc.. I wasn't sure they were going to finish the same day since sun sets early and all, but they had all things connected and water turned on by the end of the day to have fully functional plumbing before they left! And all the covering prep they did on walls and floors, there wasn't even much clean up as I had feared! Absolutely wonderful work! Cutting of walls/ceilings was minimized, they were able to reach all the bathroom and kitchen ends from the most creative routes, just amazing...
And then the patching day. Just as fantastic as the repipe day. Crew of 3 arrived and same protocol, again did so much prep work covering everything, before doing their magic on patching the holes, smoothing over, and then the incredible texturing! Perfectly fixed stucco holes too. The textures got whiter as it dried and after 2 or 3 days, the garage textures blended in so well I am not even going to paint the garage patches! Nor the walls under sink. I just need to paint the few colored walls at my leisure, but feel absolutely no rush anymore since things are patched up so nicely... My sanity has been returning back ever since!
Mr. Miguel truly is the "Top Team", he will surely grow from word of mouth. Amazing people doing amazing work, what a blessed company.
Yelp won't let me write more lol, so just check my pictures...