Have a few questions. The house was built around 1957 for reference. I am a new owner of this home. It is showing symptoms of needing a repipe. The showers have low hot water pressure. It is a ranch style home with basement. It appears the pipes run above the basement drop ceiling from one end of the house (where water comes in from the street) which is near the kitchen. The water heater is located in the middle. On the other end of the house there are 3 bathrooms (1 basement level, 2 baths above on the main level). There are also some extras (external water faucets and fridge line). My thinking is that this shouldn't be too hard to do DIY. Am I crazy?
One is should I use Pex or Copper? Have worked with copper before, not pex. I have looked at some pex installs where they use a manifold and then run direct lines from each appliance to the manifold. In my case for the bathrooms, it looks like in their model I would run 6 cold and 6 hot doing it this way. Am curious what advantage there is using a manifold. Wouldn't it make better sense to run 2 3/4 inch pex lines to the bathrooms (which are above and below and adjacent to each other) and then trunk off of these 2 lines?
The pipe coming into the house is galvanized. Is there any reason to dig up front yard and replace this as well?
How difficult is it to remove the existing galvanized pipe? Sawzall cuts it quickly? Or does it require wrenching?
Finally, is it best to maybe shutoff parts of the system and replace sections at a time?
thanks for any advice. -John
One is should I use Pex or Copper? Have worked with copper before, not pex. I have looked at some pex installs where they use a manifold and then run direct lines from each appliance to the manifold. In my case for the bathrooms, it looks like in their model I would run 6 cold and 6 hot doing it this way. Am curious what advantage there is using a manifold. Wouldn't it make better sense to run 2 3/4 inch pex lines to the bathrooms (which are above and below and adjacent to each other) and then trunk off of these 2 lines?
The pipe coming into the house is galvanized. Is there any reason to dig up front yard and replace this as well?
How difficult is it to remove the existing galvanized pipe? Sawzall cuts it quickly? Or does it require wrenching?
Finally, is it best to maybe shutoff parts of the system and replace sections at a time?
thanks for any advice. -John