Houston Plumbing Cost Guide

Article Date: 5/13/2019 | Posted By Nick

Of all the questions we hear, both in the office and in the field, the number one question is always “how much is this going to cost me?”. The second most common question is “do you have a pricing guide for your services?”

While it’s extremely difficult to put a price on any plumbing job without looking at the specifics involved with the job, we wanted to give you some ballpark figures for the most common tasks we perform. This week, we look at the plumbing cost of some of the more expensive plumbing jobs we do.

WHOLE HOUSE RE-PIPING

The first major service we’re going to discuss is whole house re-piping, which as the name suggests, is when we disconnect and remove (or bypass) all the supply and drain lines in your home and ultimately replace them.

There are several aspects of a whole house re-pipe where the cost of the overall job is completely variable. The number of bathrooms, total size of the house, ease of access to your pipes, and the type of material you choose to re-pipe with will all be factor in determining the price of your re-pipe job.

LOW-END WHOLE HOUSE RE-PIPE $4,500 – 6,000
(under optimal conditions, with PEX supply pipes)

AVERAGE WHOLE HOUSE RE-PIPE $ 20,000
(average 3 or 4-bathroom home, copper supply pipes, with difficult access to pipes)

HIGH-END WHOLE HOUSE RE-PIPE $30,000+
(with all the bells and whistles, all copper installation, multiple floors)

SEWER LINE REPLACEMENT

At number two on our Plumbing Cost Guide is the replacement of your sewer line, which carries all your “gray water” (contaminated wastewater) away from your home and into your city’s sewer system.

Here in Houston, most of the sewer lines running from our homes are made of galvanized pipe, which over times sheds its inner coating and start to rust. As the fittings at either end of the pipe begin to corrode, leaks can appear; tree roots that wrap around the sewer line begin to crush it, causing infiltration of roots in your sewer line.

Replacing a sewer pipe itself, without any other factors taken into consideration will cost you between $55 and $95 per foot of installed sewer line. On a forty-foot sewer line, that can be as low as $2,200 for materials and installation.

Sadly, falling in line with life not being fair, many variables can play absolute havoc with the plumbing cost of your sewer line replacement. In the best-case scenario, your sewer line runs its entire length beneath your lawn, only covered by soil. Quite often, your sewer line is going to run at least part of its range beneath a driveway, a patio or your expensive landscaping.

LOW-END SEWER LINE REPLACEMENT $3,500 – 6,000
(under optimal conditions, sewer line buried under soil only)

HIGH-END SEWER LINE REPLACEMENT $20,000+
(longer, more complex runs, excavation/replacement of driveways/patios)

WATER HEATER REPLACEMENT

The last stop for this “part one” of our plumbing cost guide is going to be something a homeowner needs to consider every seven to ten years, water heater replacement.

Tank-type water heaters are still in the majority here in Houston and replacing them isn’t very expensive. Generally, when we are called out for a water heater replacement, we like to inform the customer about the advantages of installing a tankless water heater. Tankless water heater units offer unlimited hot water on-demand, regardless of how much you use, as well as improved energy efficiency over their clunky and obsolete predecessors. Imagine how much energy is wasted keeping a fifty-gallon tank of cold water in your attic heated twenty-four-hours a day.

While a tankless water heater will cost you quite a bit more upon installation, the savings you’ll see in your home energy bills will make a sting a little easier to take.

WATER HEATER RAPLACEMENT (Tank-Type): $1,200 - $2,500

We hope that this extremely brief and minimal guide is helpful the next time you need plumbing cost information. Please, keep in mind that all the prices we’ve given are merely estimates based on the average costs of jobs that we do. This plumbing cost guide is not intended to provide you with any estimate for the work needed in your home.

Should you need pricing information for the jobs we’ve listed, or for any other plumbing service, call Nick’s Plumbing and Sewer Services for a free estimate.

Already called another plumber? No problem, we offer free second opinions as well!