If your home was built during the Sacramento-area housing boom, there's a real chance Kitec plumbing is hiding behind your walls — and most homeowners have no idea.
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Most homeowners in El Dorado Hills, Folsom, Roseville, and Rocklin have never given their pipes a second thought. You bought the house, moved in, and the water works — so why worry? Here’s the thing: Kitec plumbing doesn’t give you much warning before it fails. It doesn’t drip slowly or give you time to plan. It bursts. And if it’s hiding behind your drywall right now, the clock has been running for a while. This guide will help you understand what Kitec is, how to spot it, and what the failure actually looks like — so you’re not finding out the hard way.
Kitec was a plumbing system installed in North American homes from roughly 1995 to 2007. It used a layered pipe — plastic on the outside, aluminum in the middle — paired with brass fittings at every connection point. Builders liked it because it was cheaper and faster to install than copper. For a while, it seemed like a reasonable alternative.
The problem showed up in the fittings. Over time, a chemical process called dezincification causes the zinc to leach out of the brass, leaving behind a porous, weakened structure. Eventually — not gradually, but suddenly — the fitting fails under normal household water pressure. Kitec was recalled in 2005, and a $125 million class action settlement was later reached to compensate homeowners whose properties were damaged. That settlement is documented. The risk is real.
The most common question we hear is some version of: “How do I even know if I have it?” It’s a fair question, because Kitec isn’t always visible. A lot of it runs behind walls, through crawl spaces, and into areas most homeowners never look. But there are several places you can check right now without any tools.
Start with the pipes you can actually see — under sinks, near the water heater, in the utility room, or anywhere plumbing is exposed. Kitec pipes are typically orange for hot water lines and blue for cold water lines, though some installations used gray, red, or other colors. The more reliable identifier is the text printed directly on the pipe itself. Look for the words “Kitec,” “IPEX,” “PlumbBetter,” or “PERT/AL/PERT” stamped along the pipe’s surface. If you see any of those, you have your answer.
The fittings are the other thing to look at. Kitec fittings are brass-colored and connect to the pipe at joints and elbows. If you notice white mineral buildup or dark discoloration around those fittings, that’s not just hard water residue — it can be a sign that dezincification is already underway.
One more place to check: your electrical panel. Builders who installed Kitec were required to place a yellow warning sticker inside the panel door noting that the home contains non-metallic interior water piping. Not every panel has it, and not every sticker has survived 25 years intact, but it’s worth opening the panel and looking.
If your home was built between 1995 and 2007 in El Dorado Hills, Cameron Park, Shingle Springs, Folsom, Roseville, Rocklin, Lincoln, or Elk Grove, you’re in the exact geographic and time window where Kitec was heavily used. That doesn’t mean you definitely have it — but it means the question is worth asking before something forces you to answer it.
This is the part most homeowners don’t fully understand, and it matters. Kitec doesn’t fail the way a worn-out faucet does. There’s no slow drip that gets worse over time, no gradual pressure drop that gives you weeks to schedule a repair. When the dezincification process reaches its endpoint, the fitting gives way under normal operating pressure — and water releases fast, often inside a wall or ceiling where you can’t see it.
By the time you notice something is wrong, you might be looking at soaked insulation, warped drywall, subfloor damage, or worse. Water damage of that kind doesn’t just cost money to fix — it can take weeks to remediate properly, especially if mold has had time to develop.
Here’s what makes the timing particularly relevant for homeowners in El Dorado County, Placer County, and Sacramento County right now: the homes built during the Sacramento-area housing boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s are now between 18 and 30 years old. The Kitec installed in those homes has been running under pressure, exposed to local water chemistry, for nearly three decades. El Dorado County’s water is notably hard — elevated in calcium and magnesium — and hard water accelerates the dezincification process in brass fittings. That’s not a general warning. It’s a specific, compounding risk factor for homes in this region.
Sun City Lincoln Hills in Lincoln — a large Del Webb and Pulte-built retirement community in Placer County — was specifically named in legal proceedings related to Kitec failures. Folsom, Roseville, Rocklin, Natomas, and Rancho Murieta have all been identified by repipe specialists as communities where Kitec was installed at scale during that era. If your home is in any of these areas and was built in that window, a professional inspection isn’t an overreaction. It’s just due diligence.
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We get a lot of questions about Kitec from homeowners across the foothills and the greater Sacramento area. Some people have already seen something that worried them. Others are just doing their homework after hearing a neighbor mention it. Either way, the questions tend to follow a pretty consistent pattern — so here are the honest answers.
Not necessarily. Home inspectors are generalists. Their job is to assess the visible, accessible condition of a home’s systems — and most Kitec plumbing runs through areas inspectors don’t fully access. Behind drywall, inside crawl spaces, in finished basements. An inspector noting “plumbing appears functional” is an observation about what they could see and test on the day of the inspection. It is not a Kitec clearance.
This comes up often with homeowners in El Dorado Hills and Folsom who bought their homes in the 2010s — often from original owners who had lived there since the early 2000s. The inspection passed, the water worked fine, and Kitec never came up. That doesn’t mean it isn’t there. It means nobody specifically looked for it.
If your home was built between 1995 and 2007, the right move is to have a plumber who knows what Kitec looks like do a targeted inspection — not rely on a general home inspection report that may predate any visible symptoms. The dezincification process can be well underway before anything shows up on the surface. By the time pressure drops or a fitting starts to weep, the structural integrity of that fitting is already compromised.
We’ve been working on homes across El Dorado County, Placer County, and Sacramento County for over 24 years. We know what Kitec looks like, where builders typically ran it, and what the early warning signs are in this region specifically.
This is the most common objection we hear, and it makes intuitive sense. If the pipes have held up for two decades, doesn’t that suggest they’re probably okay? Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way with Kitec.
Dezincification isn’t a process that levels off. It’s cumulative. Every year of exposure to pressurized water — especially water with the mineral content common in El Dorado County — advances the degradation in the brass fittings. A fitting that has been slowly losing structural integrity for 20 years isn’t “proven safe.” It’s 20 years further along a process that ends in failure. The pipes that haven’t burst yet are not a different category from the ones that have — they’re just earlier in the same timeline.
There’s also the water heater factor. Kitec pipes are rated to handle water temperatures up to 180°F, but residential water heaters often operate at temperatures that push against or exceed that threshold. The hot water supply lines — the orange ones — take the most stress. In homes where the water heater has never been adjusted or serviced, that temperature exposure has been continuous.
If you’ve noticed reduced water pressure that you’ve been attributing to the water company, or you’ve seen white residue or discoloration around pipe fittings, those are specific signs worth taking seriously. Low water pressure in a Kitec system can indicate buildup inside the pipes from the degradation process, which means the failure is already in progress, just not yet visible from the outside.
If your home was built between 1995 and 2007 anywhere in El Dorado County, Placer County, or Sacramento County, the practical step is simple: find out whether you have Kitec plumbing. Check the visible pipes near your water heater and under your sinks. Look for orange or blue pipes with “Kitec” or “IPEX” printed on them. Open your electrical panel and look for a yellow warning sticker. If you’re not sure what you’re looking at, call a plumber who knows this system specifically.
Kitec plumbing doesn’t announce itself before it fails. The $125 million class action settlement exists because the damage it caused — to homes just like yours, in communities just like the ones we serve — was real and widespread. Getting ahead of it is not an overreaction. It’s just the smarter move.
We’ve been working on homes across El Dorado County, Placer County, and Sacramento County for over 24 years. If you have questions about Kitec, want a professional inspection, or just need a straight answer from someone who’s seen this firsthand in this region, we’re available around the clock — including for emergencies.
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