I came home last night to find water on my basement floor. After looking around, I located a pinhole leak on the short segment of pipe coming into the house from the street. This is the one foot of pipe before my meter and house cutoff valve so there's no way to turn it off other than having the town turn it off at the street.
My plumber is telling me that, even though this is just a pinhole inside the house, it's probably indicative of the condition of the entire line and he says the only proper fix is to replace the entire line from street to the meter in the basement. Ouch.
Does this seem reasonable? I'm trying to grasp how such a small thing is going to cost me thousands (mostly because of digging a new ditch). The house was built in 1987. The short segment of pipe that is leaking appears to be copper although I don't know if that is usually true for the entire line out to the valve on the street? Let me know if there is other info I can provide to give a more complete picture.
Best Answer
In 1987 we were still using acid flux, there was also no requirement to ream cut pipe ends. In addition, domestic (U.S.) production of copper had dropped precipitously and the demand was being met with foreign copper products with dubious quality control specs. All those things have contributed to frequent failure of copper water pipe and connections from that era. I have repaired numerous pinhole leaks.
Unfortunately for you, it probably cannot be fixed without shutting down the line and draining it. Personally, I would cut out the pinhole and solder in a "no-stop" repair coupling, taking my chances on future leaks (we are talking about upstream of your meter, after all). Dig it up when you have no other choice.
In my area, the water supply utility is responsible for everything upstream of the meter.