Repiping Wellington

One leak is a repair job. Three leaks in eighteen months, water that runs rusty after a weekend away, and a shower that fades whenever someone runs the kitchen tap is something else: the pipe itself is worn out. Each patch fixes one spot while the rest of the old line keeps ageing, which is why a burst pipe repair stops being good value once failures start repeating.

We replace water supply pipe in homes across Wellington, the Hutt Valley, Porirua and the Kāpiti Coast, either the full system or just the worst runs. Every job starts with a free inspection and a written quote with a fixed price, so you can weigh up a staged repipe against doing it all at once before anything is booked.

Pricing: quotes are free, and every job gets a fixed price before we start, so there are no surprises on the invoice.

Repiping Jobs We Handle Across Wellington

• Full house repipe
• Galvanised pipe replacement
• Grey polybutylene replacement
• Repipe house cost quotes
• Partial repipes
• Copper and PEX repiping

Signs the pipework has reached the end of its life

A single symptom rarely settles it. When several of these turn up together, a repipe is usually the cheaper path over the next ten years:

• Pinhole leaks in different parts of the house within a year or two
• Brown or orange water at the first tap you open in the morning
• Weak flow at every outlet, not just one tired mixer
• Grey steel pipe with threaded joints under the floor or in the ceiling
• Grey or black plastic pipe joined with crimped metal rings
• Damp patches or a musty smell under the house with no obvious source

Old pipe in Wellington houses

Wellington has a lot of older housing. Te Ara records one builder alone putting up 156 houses in Mount Cook and Newtown between 1892 and 1908, and Aro Valley is known for its rows of workers' cottages and villas. Houses of that age that still carry early galvanised steel pipe tend to corrode from the inside, so the bore narrows, pressure drops and the pipe eventually rusts through.

The next big wave was state housing, starting with the first state house in Miramar in 1937 and followed by planned suburbs such as Naenae in the 1940s and Porirua in the 1950s. Many of these homes have been replumbed in parts over the decades, so it is common to find galvanised, copper and plastic all in one house. Grey polybutylene was widely used in the 1970s and 1980s, so houses from that era, in suburbs such as Churton Park and Whitby, are worth checking. Build magazine notes that old polybutylene will not necessarily fail and suggests replacing the accessible runs first, which is often the sensible approach.

How It Works

Whole-house or staged repipe

A whole-house repipe replaces everything from the toby to each tap, hot and cold. It suits houses with galvanised pipe throughout, or where failures keep showing up in different rooms. A staged or partial repipe targets the worst sections first: the supply pipe from the boundary, the long subfloor runs, or the hot lines from the cylinder. Your side of the toby is your responsibility, so if the line from the boundary is leaking we can include water main repairs in the same job.

We use PEX or copper, chosen to suit the house, the water supply and your budget. Many older Wellington houses sit on timber piles with a subfloor you can work under, which lets us run new pipe beneath the floor and keep wall openings small. On hill sites with a low crawl space or a concrete slab we plan the route through the ceiling instead.

Why a hidden leak can run for months here

Most homes in Wellington City, Lower Hutt, Upper Hutt and Porirua do not have a water meter, so a leak on your property does not show up as a jump in a water bill. Tiaki Wai reports average water loss of 37 percent across the network in 2025/26, covering public and private leaks, and asks residents to get a registered plumber to fix leaks on their own property. A slow drip under the floor can soak timber for a long time before anyone notices.

On the Kāpiti Coast it is different. Every property is metered, so a meter reading that climbs while all the taps are off is a strong clue. Either way, if you suspect water is escaping somewhere, our leak detection service can find it before you commit to a repipe.

What affects the cost of a repipe

Every repipe is quoted for free after an inspection, because two houses on the same street can be very different jobs. The main cost drivers are:

• The size of the house and the number of bathrooms, kitchens and laundries
• Subfloor height and access, or a concrete slab that rules the floor out
• Steep sites and long carries from the street, which are common on Wellington hills
• Pipe material, and whether the supply pipe from the toby is included
• Making good, such as plastering and painting the small access holes

Living with the work

Most households stay at home through a repipe. We plan each day so the water is back on by evening, cover floors and furniture, and keep dust down when we open a wall. In apartments and units in places like Te Aro and Thorndon we also work around body corporate rules and shared shut-offs.

Before anything is closed up, the whole system is pressure tested. You get a record of what pipe went in and where, which helps when you sell or insure the house, and where the work needs a building consent we handle the paperwork with your council. If low pressure was part of the reason for the repipe, we retest flow at the taps at the end so you can see the difference. You can read more about pressure problems on our low water pressure page.

Why Choose Cheeky's Plumbers for Repiping

Repiping FAQs

Repiping Across Wellington

Our repiping team works in every Wellington suburb. Find your local plumbers:

Repiping Guides

• Old Pipes Under Wellington Villas: Galvanised Steel, Copper and When to Replace

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