We've got a couple of good, spirited threads regarding various issues related to home ownership, so I figured I'd throw another log on the fire.

I bought my house in November, and as a first time buyer, decided to hire a buyer's agent. He recommended that I use a home inspector he worked with in the past, and I was pretty happy with the stuff the inspector found. I ended up getting a $1500 credit for various things that needed attention, and felt like I was buying a house in pretty good shape, all things considered.

A couple months ago, however, I started to see some water damage on the ceiling in my kitchen. Soon the water was coming down the wall in an adjoining room, and I had a contractor come in to look at it. He found several leaks in copper pipes behind the walls of my bathroom. The water kept coming after these leaks were fixed, so the contractor opened up my ceiling and found several more leaks, this time in the kitchen. Then, I see a couple more pinhole leaks down in the basement.

In other words, my copper tubing (about 45 years old) is completely shot, and I'm staring down the barrel of replacing my entire plumbing system. I've had a plumber come in, and though I haven't gotten the estimate yet, I know it's going to be a big number.

Now, I understand that shit happens as a homeowner, and that not all kinds of repairs can be anticipated by a home inspector. I couldn't have expected him to see leaks behind walls and above ceilings, and I didn't notice anything suspicious about the pipes in the basement myself, and couldn't tell you if there was any evidence of corrosion on them. Then again, home inspecting isn't my job, which is why I paid the guy to find stuff for me.

I also know that this type of thing doesn't happen overnight. My pipes were leaking in no fewer than seven places within six months of buying my home. Furthermore, in one case (in the kitchen) I found that the area of the ceiling where water damage was visible had been painted over. Clearly, they had tried to cover up water damage (and obviously succeeded in that regard.)

Basically, I'm feeling pretty bad about all of this. I'm not quite ready to say I feel like I got jobbed, but I do feel that I was deceived by the seller (painting over the prior water damage, not noting anything about leaks on the disclosure form) and that maybe the home inspector could have noticed the exposed pipes in the basement weren't in the best shape.

So, I guess I'm wondering if anyone's ever been through this kind of thing, and might have any advice on what to do. "Suck it up" is a valid response, and, if that's the case, consider this thread nothing more than a rant on my part.

I would consider 2 options:
* Does insurance cover you? Copper pipes shouldn't rust through - there's no reason that it should fail AFAIK. In which case each incident is covered by insurance. It may not have had corrosion inhibitor put in though
* If the system is very old then the inspector should have inspected it and let you know. Consider his liability here. You paid him to inspect the house and fabric. Should he have mentioned the state of the plumbing?

The only reason I can think of for copper pipes to be failing that badly, is that they must have been allowed to freeze with water inside them at some point.

Are these pipes all on the *inside* of the insulation envelope of the house, or are some of them on outside of the insulation (or in the middle of the insulation) ?

Or was the house left unheated for more than a couple of days in the winter ?

Cheers

Not on my watch, it wasn't. The plumber who came around to give me an estimate initially thought the pipes might have frozen when he talked to me on the phone, but when he looked at it, said the pipes are just old, and that it's not unheard of for "M" grade copper pipe to fail after 40-50 years.

Here are a couple pictures of the leaks I took. The first one is in my basement where pipes are exposed, the second is from my kitchen where a big section of ceiling was cut out for access. It seems to me the second one could very well be the fault of a bad soldering job, but from what my contractor told me, the leaks he fixed upstairs were in the middle of a section of pipe like the first picture.

Normal inspectors don't punch holes in the wall. Your inspector's job is to notice leaks in visible pipes and to use a moisture sensor to look for wet drywall. Read over your inspection report carefully. If the inspector didn't do a moisture test, that might give you a reason to be annoyed.

Meanwhile, since it looks like you're stuck redoing your plumbing, I'd encourage you to check out PEX pipes. Basically, they run flexible rubber tubing everywhere rather than rigid copper/plastic pipes. It's a star-shaped topology as well, meaning you get a central location where you can turn any outlet on and off. Among other benefits, you have more resistance against freezing damage, you avoid "water hammer", etc.

The basement is unfinished, so the pipes are very easy to see there. I am quite certain he did not use any kind of moisture sensor anywhere during the inspection. I walked through the house with him as he looked around and would have noticed something like that.

The only mention of the pipes on the inspection report is "Condition: Satisfactory." He did find a waste pipe in the basement that was sloped improperly, but there's no mention of any testing/examination of the pipes.

The plumber who gave me an estimate said that using PEX can hurt resale value. I'm not worried about that now, but in the future, it might be a concern. Of course it's possible he was blowing smoke to try to do a more expensive job.

The leaky area in that second photo does *not* appear to be at the solder joint either.

Frozen pipes. Little doubt of that.

Our house here, for example, has hard water and 47 year old original copper. That stuff is still like new. Thick, solid, and not even close to being leaky (we know, because we've had to cut into it to add new lines during recent renovations).

On the other hand, it is somewhat grotty on the inside, so we're happy to have replaced sections of it with new, clean pipe.

In your case, I imagine the interior of the pipe is probably equally grotty, so just save yourself some stress, and consider this an upgrade to your drinking water quality.

Go with PEX -- less wallboard damage, considerably less labour, and the estimate from the plumber should be less -- if not, get another estimate or three.

The way things are going, by the time you sell again somebody will have determined that copper is as harmful to humans as it is to fish, and the PEX will be a prime selling point!

Cheers

And I wonder where the 40-50 year old figure comes from?

The floor above those pipes (photo) was obviously constructed relatively recently, say within the past 10-20 years or so (modern plywood, glued down with modern construction adhesive).

But the solid wood joists are older than that.

???

Er, combination of typo and brain fart on my part. The house was built in 1975, which makes it 33 years old. The plumber used the 40 year figure, I guess he was rounding up.

He did say that "M" copper is rarely used in houses these days, and that most places use the thicker "L" or even "K" grades.

My new house has PEX. It's really fantastic. You never have knocking pipes. You never have toilet flushes causing changes in shower temperature. And, you don't have to worry about the increasing cost of copper. In fact, you can recycle your old copper and get some money back from this deal...

I disagree. It could easily have been caused by an electrolytic reaction. It might well be frozen pipes, too, but some of Tony's pipes are interior pipes, if I remember correctly.

Probably the best way to know which one is to see if there's a patina on the inside of the pipe or not. Of course, that necessitates removing the piping. But I think Tony's at the point where he has to replace the piping anyway. But if he decides to go with copper, he should definitely check that out, and possibly ground the piping better if he needs to.

There is, on the leaky sections that have been replaced, at least.



With copper prices at an all-time high, I think PEX may be the way to go, concerns about resale value be damned.

That almost certainly means that it's not an electrolytic reaction, then. If it was eating the copper away, there would be fresh copper left behind. With the patina there, it ought to be relatively protected from that sort of corrosion.

I'd be inclined to agree with Mark now, even if I do find it odd that interior pipes would freeze. Of course, I'm not familiar with how common that sort of thing might be in areas with colder winters that we get down here.


If memory serves, it's been used in Europe for ages, so I doubt that there's going to be any newly discovered concern about health problems.

I have PEX too, I have never heard anything about resale value being lower because of it. I doubt most people even consider things like that even though they should. I couldn't see any disadvantage with it and the plumber charged less for using it so that's what I went with.

I hadn't heard of this either. Why would PEX affect resale negatively? What, is it coated with BPA or something?

That seals the deal, then. First find a different plumber -- that one either doesn't know s--t, or figures that you (and your friends here!) don't know s--t.

There's no way that 1970s plumbing, let alone early 1960s plumbing, should be failing in that way, regardless of which (pipe) wall thickness was used.

Somebody in the past has left the house unheated for a week or more, and the pipes froze, causing them to develop cracks (as shown in your photos).

Find a modern plumber with PEX experience and prices, and enjoy some healthy water afterwards.

Cheers

Tony, sounds like you need [to] Change [to a plumber] You Can Believe In.


They say that Type M is OK for above-ground application but not always code in US, but 70s is not old.


Divorce house. Mom stomps off with kids to Grandma in Altoona and hubby consoles himself with new squeeze in St Barts while oil tank runs dry and new high pressure system sends local temps into the Fahrenheit teens.


I think folks are nervous about plastics because of the earlier-generation products (polybutylene, I think?). Watching some home-repair show recently, it looks like there is a major industry in parts of the U.S. just replacing that stuff from the 70s. So, PEX sure looks swell, but no decades-long track record like copper.

I'd get three quotes. I'd do PEX. By the time it fails, we'll all likely be living on big communal rafts anyway.

Cheers, indeed.

Oh, and I am not litigious by nature (have managed to get this far without every hiring a lawyer or suing anyone), but if I had good evidence of the seller painting over discoloured leaky spots I would be siccing the legal dogs on them.

Meanwhile, back to the inspector's liability:

Apparently, there's been some recent court action on this very topic. The long and the short of it is whether a court might find the inspector to have been "grossly negligent" and so forth.

In short, you've got a shot at suing your inspector. However, I'm guessing that the fees you pay your lawyer per hour will dwarf the cost of paying a competent plumber. And besides, you were planning to do some repainting anyway, weren't you? Before you get started going down the lawsuit road, you should definitely have a close read of the contract you signed with your inspector. There's a good chance that it makes no guarantees and limits the inspector's liability.

Still, if nothing else, you can tell the inspector that he missed some obvious problems, invoice him for the repair cost, and see what happens. Don't threaten to sue (yet). Maybe the guy cares enough about his reputation to want to help you out. If a court finds that he was grossly negligent, that's pretty much the end of his business, so he might be willing to help.

Do you perchance use well water? Or is it municipal? My parents had an issue with their copper pipes within 10 years of building their house. The sheet rock in my sisters' bathroom started to crumble. (yes, that's plural possessive on purpose.) Turns out that their water supply from the well outside was slightly acidic. Acidic enough to leech the copper from the inside of the pipes. This was most evident where threading was done to the ends of the pipes to attach the shower heads. They had to redo the ends only and added a massive filtration system to the entire house.

Another side effect that was noticed is that the greenish tint that was present in all the showers, sinks, and tubs went away. Obviously, our pipes were being deposited regularly in our sinks.

Mmm.. one other, extremely remote possibility: excessive water pressure. This would be far more likely to result in leaking fixtures rather than burst pipes, though.

Still, if your house is near the bottom of a valley or something, the water pressure might be a tad higher than normal.

-ml

Yup. That was a segment on Ask This Old House in Raleigh. Represent!

I was going to say. Rich seems to use that stuff most of the time on TOH.

For what it's worth, PEX piping is also subjected to some pretty serious safety tests as well. On the flip side, the plumbers who no longer get to charge big bucks for installing copper, oppose PEX, saying it's going to poison you and turn your children green. But don't worry, the people who make the fancy plastics in PEX pipes say there are no problems at all.

Random amusement: our fridge has a fancy activated charcoal filter, which I just replaced. I ran a bunch of water through it to get it all warmed up and such. I find that the straight tap water (via eeeevil PEX piping) tastes better than the water from my fridge (which probably uses its own cheap plastics for the internal piping...).

There was a rash of pinhole leaks here in MD not too long ago. This document tells a bit about it.

-jk

A report for which reading between the lines seems a necessity.

They determined that some water supply regions have a bigger problem than others. That the corrosion can be caused by a combination of aluminum and chlorine in the water. But did not try to tie the two together.

If the pipes have been damaged by freezing the pipes diameter will be slightly larger. In my experience with frozen pipes, they leak as soon as they unfreeze and leak A LOT.

Did you get a home owner's warranty with the house? I know my broker paid for my first year - kind of as a piece of mind thing.
For plumbing, they cover a whole slew of stuff, including 'Plumbing Pipe Leaks'.

Good luck, repairs like that are miserable to have to experience.

Check your state laws or with an attorney. In many states it is illegal to intentionally cover up problems with a home before you sell it. If they didn't mention this problem when you bought and they knew about it, then you might be able to sue for damages.

From my father, who knows a thing or two about real estate:

Yeah, I think I'd be doing the same. It's one thing if they're painting over discoloured spots from something that leaked in the past, and they've since had fixed, but painting over discoloured spots from something that's *still* leaking is a problem, especially if they haven't put it on the disclosures.

We had an offer accepted on a house, that, during the inspection, we noticed a spot on the ceiling that looked like it might be a leak. The owner insisted that the problem had been fixed, and it was on the disclosure form as having been fixed. Our inspector got up there with the moisture detector (luckily it was raining that day), and found that it hadn't been fixed, and it was leaking. They've since amended their disclosure form, but we pulled out of that deal, regardless -- it was going to be a money pit.