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Plumbing

  • fixture count
  • PEX
  • copper
  • drywall repair
  • permit

Whole-house repipe cost calculator

Repiping a 2,000 sq ft, 2.5-bath house with PEX runs roughly $7,600–$15,800 with permit in 2026, typical near $11,439; the same house in copper costs about $15,800–$28,600 — close to double. Pipe material is the largest lever, followed by bathroom count (which drives the fixture total) and whether finished walls need drywall repair afterward. The per-fixture bands behind those numbers are calibrated to 2026 industry guides, with BLS plumber wages as a regional cross-check.

Enter your home's size, bathrooms, and pipe material. You get a low / typical / high installed-cost range, a PEX vs copper comparison for the same house, and the exact fixture-count formula we used — so you can challenge any assumption.

Total living area. Size mostly matters through pipe-run length; bathrooms matter more.
Count half baths as 0.5. Bathrooms are the biggest driver of fixture count.
Second-floor runs add routing labor; we apply a 15% factor (our estimate, shown in the math).
Both totals appear in the comparison table either way.
Repipe quotes usually exclude patching and paint — we itemize it so you can see it.

Last reviewed 2026-07-22 · pricing data as of 2026-08 · how we build these numbers

Two inputs feed a five-step chain. A 2,000 square foot home with 2.5 bathrooms starts from 5 base fixtures — kitchen sink, dishwasher, laundry, water heater and hose bib — then adds 3.5 per bathroom for 8.75 and 0.5 per thousand square feet for 1.0, totalling 14.75 and rounding to 15 wet fixtures. Fifteen fixtures at the $750 typical PEX-A rate is $11,250, and the $189 typical permit brings the planning figure to $11,439. Bathrooms move the count seven times as hard as floor area does.
From two inputs to a dollar figure:the wet-fixture chainPermit included, drywall repair excluded, single storey — the calculator's own default adds finished-wall repair.† $11,250 = 15 × $750; $11,439 adds the $189 typical permit. Both are computed here, not quoted anywhere.Finished walls add $300–$1,800 of drywall repair, and a second storey a 1.15× factor — both our estimates.The estimator is CostCandor's own: no public survey of per-home fixture counts exists. repipe.json, fixtureEstimator (interpolated).The chain the calculator runs, from repipe.json. Permit included, drywall repair excluded, single storey.

How this estimate is built

The calculator does five things, all in the open:

  1. Fixture count. Repipe contractors price by wet fixture, not by square foot, so we estimate your count as 5 + 3.5 × bathrooms + 0.5 × (sq ft ÷ 1,000), rounded. The base 5 covers the kitchen sink, dishwasher, laundry, water heater, and a hose bib; each bathroom adds roughly three to four fixtures. This formula is our own — no public survey of per-home fixture counts exists — and it is calibrated so its output reproduces published whole-home totals.
  2. Per-fixture rate. Each material carries a low / typical / high installed cost per fixture: $500–$1,000 for PEX-A and $1,050–$1,850 for copper. These bands are calibrated from Angi's 2026 per-fixture range ($650–$1,500 across materials) against installed cost per square foot from 2026 repipe guides — PEX at $3.50–$7.00 and copper at $8.00–$14.00 per square foot of house. The copper band is derived, not directly quoted, and is labeled that way in our data file.
  3. Story factor. Two-story homes get a 15% multiplier on pipe and labor for longer risers and harder routing. That figure is our editorial estimate; guides confirm the direction but publish no fixed premium.
  4. Drywall repair. Most repipe quotes exclude patching and paint. If your walls are finished, we add $300–$1,800 as a separate line so it never surprises you at the final invoice.
  5. Permit. A whole-house repipe is permitted work almost everywhere; municipal fees run $75–$800.

Data sources

Labor baseline: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, SOC 47-2152 (Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters), national median $30.67/hour, series OEUN000000000000047215208. Copper material trend: BLS Producer Price Index, copper and copper alloy pipe and tube, series WPU10250239 (+22.5% from March 2025 to February 2026). Per-fixture and per-square-foot bands: Angi and 2026 repipe industry guides. Retail SKUs (Mueller Streamline Type L copper, SharkBite/Apollo PEX-A) observed July 2026. Pricing data as of 2026-07 — see methodology for the full trail.

PEX vs copper: what the price gap buys

The comparison table above prices both materials on your exact house because the choice moves the bill more than any other input — a copper repipe costs roughly twice what PEX does. The gap comes from two places. Material: copper pipe is a commodity metal product, while PEX tubing costs a fraction as much per foot. Labor: copper is cut, deburred, fluxed, and soldered joint by joint, while PEX pulls through framing like electrical cable and connects with expansion or crimp fittings, so a crew finishes a PEX house in noticeably fewer hours.

Installed cost per wet fixture on one axis. PEX-A runs $500 to $1,000 with a typical of $750; copper Type L runs $1,050 to $1,850 with a typical of $1,450. The two bands never touch — the most expensive PEX fixture is $50 below the cheapest copper one. Behind both, a shaded strip marks the $650 to $1,500 per-fixture figure the industry quotes without naming a material; it straddles both bands and therefore cannot tell them apart.
PEX and copper never overlap, per fixtureInstalled cost for one wet fixture. Behind both bands, the shaded strip is Angi's all-material figure — the industry number quoted without naming a material.The gap is exactly $50: the priciest PEX fixture still costs less than the cheapest copper one.Installed per square foot of house: PEX $3.50–$7.00, copper $8.00–$14.00.repipe.json, as of 2026-08. The copper band is derived, not directly quoted; the hatched bar marks that second series.Per-fixture bands from repipe.json. The shaded strip is Angi's all-material range, shown because it is the number most quotes cite.

What copper buys for the premium: a longer track record (75+ years in service), tolerance for UV and rodents that PEX lacks, and unquestioned acceptance by every inspector and appraiser. What PEX buys besides price: fewer joints buried in walls (each soldered joint is a future leak candidate), quiet operation, and resistance to the pinhole corrosion that ends the life of copper systems in aggressive water. Most 2026 repipes in the U.S. are PEX; copper remains common in high-end work and in jurisdictions or HOAs that require it.

Copper prices are moving — date every quote

One reason we stamp this page with a data date: the BLS producer price index for copper pipe and tube (series WPU10250239) rose 22.5% between March 2025 and February 2026. A copper repipe bid from last year is stale, and a contractor who quoted copper this spring may re-price before contract signing. If you are comparing a months-old copper quote against a fresh PEX quote, the copper number is almost certainly understated. PEX resin pricing (PPI plastics pipe, series WPU07210603) has been far calmer over the same window.

What can move your real price outside this range

  • Slab foundation — when the old lines run under concrete, new lines reroute through the attic and walls, adding roughly 25–50%. If a slab leak is what brought you here, start with our slab leak repair guide — a spot repair may beat a repipe, or not.
  • Fixture count above the model — a wet bar, a second laundry hookup, a pool-house line, or a water softener each add a fixture the formula doesn't see. Add them mentally at the per-fixture rate shown in your worksheet.
  • Wall and ceiling finishes — plaster, tile, and wallpaper cost more to open and restore than the drywall band we carry. Tile walls in older bathrooms are the classic budget-breaker.
  • Scope creep at the water heater — crews often find a water heater at end-of-life mid-repipe. Price that separately with our water heater replacement calculator rather than accepting a bundled number you can't inspect.
  • The pipe under the yard — a repipe covers the pipes inside the house. If your service line or sewer lateral is also failing, that is a separate excavation job; our sewer line replacement calculator prices it.
One water line from the street to the tap, with the repipe quote's boundaries marked on it. The service line under the yard is a separate excavation job priced per installed foot at $40 to $125. The meter and main shutoff are not in a repipe at all. Below a dashed line the charging unit changes: the pipes inside the walls are priced by the wet fixture — 15 of them at $500 to $1,000 each in PEX-A, or $7,500 to $15,000 — and with the $75 to $800 permit the scope totals $7,575 to $15,800, this page's headline figure. The water heater sitting on the same run is drawn on the chain with no band, because it is priced separately.
What the repipe quote covers,and where it stopsOne line of water from the street to the tap. The charging unit changes halfway along it, and two links on the chain are not in the quote at all.$7,500–15,000 is 15 fixtures × the PEX-A band, and the permit adds $75–800. That exact low end is $7,575; the page rounds it up.Finished walls add $300–1,800 of drywall repair — a line the quote leaves out, and not a link on this chain.repipe.json and sewer-line.json, as of 2026-08. The yard band is the open-trench water-service rate, billed per foot, not per house.Bands from repipe.json, with the yard line from sewer-line.json. The dashed line is where the charging unit changes from feet to fixtures — and where the quote's scope begins. The chain's low end, $7,575, is the exact sum of those bands; the prose on this page rounds it up to the nearest hundred.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to repipe a 2,000 sq ft house?

For a 2,000 sq ft house with two and a half bathrooms, our model estimates 15 fixtures. In PEX that totals roughly $7,600-$15,800 including permit, typical near $11,439; in copper, roughly $15,800-$28,600. Finished walls add another $300-$1,800 in drywall repair.

How much does it cost to repipe a 1,500 sq ft house with PEX?

A 1,500 sq ft house with two bathrooms works out to about 13 fixtures in our estimator. With PEX and open wall access, that is roughly $6,600-$13,800 including permit, typical near $9,939. Industry guides quote about $5,000-$10,500 for straightforward single-story jobs, so bids near our low band are common.

Is PEX cheaper than copper for a whole-house repipe?

Yes. Installed PEX runs about $3.50-$7.00 per square foot of house versus $8.00-$14.00 for copper, so a copper repipe costs roughly twice as much. Copper takes longer to install joint by joint, and its raw material price rose about 22% between March 2025 and February 2026, so copper quotes also age quickly.

How long does a whole-house repipe take?

Most whole-house repipes run three to five days with a two-person crew: one to two days of pipe work, an inspection day, and the rest for drywall patching if your walls are finished. Water is usually off for only a few hours at a time, not for the whole job.

Does a slab foundation make a repipe more expensive?

Usually, yes. When supply lines run under a concrete slab, crews reroute the new lines through the attic and walls instead of cutting the slab, which adds labor and materials — plan on roughly 25-50% above the ranges here. Our slab leak guide covers when a full repipe beats another spot repair.

Estimates are planning ranges built from published data, not quotes or professional advice. Get at least three written, itemized bids before signing anything.

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