The age of your home is a good way to tell if you have pipe material that is out of date. The plumbing in Orange County is generally younger than you would find in, say, New England, where many people live in homes originally built in the early 20th century or even the late 19th. We don’t have homes of that vintage in the OC, but there are many houses old enough to have plumbing made from outdated material. The older the pipes, the more repairs they will likely need and the higher chance your house will benefit from whole-house repiping.
To get to the specifics in the title, how long you can expect your pipes to last depends on the pipe material. We’ll go over the most common ones and which you can expect to have in your house based on the building’s age:
Water hammer—it’s an intimidating name. But it’s appropriate, because the sound that water hammer makes in your plumbing can be quite intimidating. It’s the sound of a shockwave going through the pipes, an alarming thump! noise as if someone took a hammer to the piping. Water hammer has sometimes made people believe ghosts were behind the activity. The reality is much less spooky, but it’s something that requires attention from plumbers.