Having lived through many of the plumbing issues of the apartment, I decided last month that it’s time to re-pipe with copper pipes the apartment since one of the tenants decided to leave (but changed her mind two days before she was supposed to vacate the unit, but that’s a different story). This is a major undertaking and costs mega bucks – roughly $12K.

I went through the usual bidding process of having four plumber companies to bid on the job. I even joined Angie’s list to get some feedback on some of the plumbers. I selected Water Quality Plumbing; they came in the lowest bid and yet I was impressed with their high confidence. At first, I was going to do Unit #1 first, then I decided to do both Unit #1 and unit #2 since unit #2 will be impacted somewhat with either option. Might as well bite the bullet and get it over with. Do both and the front main line!

Of course, I had doubt when on the first day the plumber started a fire in the crawl space due to the accumulated lints underneath the dryers. But they eventually completed the job and patch up the sheet rock and the cement work (for the main line) pretty well.

My sincere hope is that my future plumbing work will be much less and easier, due to more a reliable infrastructure in the first place. I would also have less anxiety about the fragile plumbing that was going to burst like a ticking time bomb. Why take a chance?