Plumber serving Cupertino, CA

Cupertino has some of the most heavily remodeled housing stock in the valley. The bones are mostly 1960s and 70s ranch, but a great many of those houses have been opened up, added to, or taken back to the studs at least once. We do a lot of the plumbing behind that work: moving a kitchen to the other side of the house, adding a bathroom where there was a closet, converting to tankless while the walls are already open.

Remodel plumbing in a house of this age is mostly a question of what you are tying into. New work is easy. Marrying it to a fifty-year-old system is where the judgment is, and the mistake we get called in to fix is usually somebody connecting beautiful new fixtures to a supply line that could not deliver for them.

The houses that have not been touched are now at the age where the original copper starts to go. Pinholes show up first, often in the hot lines, and the hard water on this side of the valley does not help. If the house is slab-built the leak may be under the concrete, in which case rerouting overhead beats breaking the floor almost every time.

Hard water is the background condition for everything here. It scales water heaters, shortens the life of valves, and leaves the white crust on fixtures that people assume is a cleaning problem. Softening helps if it is sized and plumbed properly; it is not a cure for a pipe that has already had its fifty years.

If a remodel is in the picture, get the plumbing walked before the design is finalized. Moving a kitchen to the other side of the house is straightforward on paper and much less so when the drain has to cross a slab, and knowing that early is the difference between a budget and a surprise.