Hear from Our Customers
Your insurance company stops flagging your policy. Your home becomes sellable again at full value. You stop wondering if today’s the day a pipe bursts and floods your house.
Kitec was installed in thousands of homes between 1995 and 2007 across the Sacramento region, including right here in Buckeye. The brass fittings corrode from the inside out. Zinc breaks down when it hits moisture and oxygen, creating blockages that lead to catastrophic bursts. It’s not a question of if – it’s when.
Most Buckeye homeowners with Kitec are in their 50s, own their homes outright or nearly, and have been here long enough to remember when the system was installed. You’ve probably already noticed pressure drops, discolored water, or small leaks. Those are warnings. The full failure is worse, and it happens without notice.
Once we replace your Kitec system with PEX or copper, you’re done worrying. No more insurance headaches. No more disclosure issues if you decide to sell. No more middle-of-the-night flooding that costs five figures to clean up.
Murray Plumbing is a family-owned company based in El Dorado County. We’ve been handling residential and commercial plumbing across the Sacramento area since before Kitec was even recalled. We know these systems inside and out because we’ve torn out hundreds of them.
Buckeye sits in a pocket where Kitec installations were common during the early 2000s building boom. Homes here are aging into the failure zone right now. We’re licensed, insured, and we don’t play games with pricing. You’ll know what it costs before we start, and most customers tell us the final bill came in lower than the estimate.
We’re not the biggest plumbing company in the region. We’re the one that shows up on time, does the work right, and doesn’t leave you guessing about what happened or what you paid for.
First, we come out and confirm you actually have Kitec. It’s usually orange and blue piping with brass fittings, but we verify the markings to be sure. We map out where it runs in your walls, floors, and ceilings so we know the full scope before quoting you.
Next, we give you an upfront price. Most homes in Buckeye run between $5,000 and $15,000 depending on size and how the original plumbing was laid out. If your home is a standard single-story with accessible crawl space, you’re on the lower end. Two stories with concrete slab foundation, you’re higher.
We pull permits with the county, shut off your water, and remove every inch of Kitec from your house. We replace it with cross-linked PEX or copper – your choice. PEX is faster to install, more flexible, and costs less. Copper lasts forever and some people just prefer it. Both are light-years better than Kitec.
We patch walls, texture, and paint to match. Most jobs take two to four days depending on the size of your home and how much drywall we have to open. You’ll have water back on each evening unless we’re mid-install on a major section.
Once it’s done, we walk you through the new system, show you shut-off locations, and give you documentation for your insurance company and future buyers.
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You get full removal of every Kitec pipe and fitting in your home. We don’t leave sections behind or “repair” parts of it. The entire system comes out because the entire system is compromised.
We handle all permits and inspections required by El Dorado County. You don’t have to call anyone or stand in line at the building department. We also coordinate with your insurance company if they’re requiring documentation of the replacement.
All drywall repair, texturing, and paint matching is included in the quote. We don’t hand you a gutted wall and say “find a painter.” We close it back up and make it look like we were never there.
In Buckeye, most homes sit on larger lots with accessible crawl spaces or basements, which makes the job cleaner and faster than homes on slab foundations closer to Sacramento. If your home has attic access for second-floor plumbing, that also keeps demo minimal. We use the existing pathways wherever possible to reduce the amount of wall we have to open.
You also get a warranty on the new materials and our labor. If something leaks or fails because of our work, we come back and fix it at no charge. That doesn’t cover damage you cause or normal wear over decades, but it does cover installation defects.
Check your water heater connections, under sinks, and in your crawl space or attic. Kitec pipes are usually bright orange or blue with brass fittings. The pipe itself will have “Kitec” or “KTC” stamped on it along with the manufacturer name.
If your home was built or remodeled between 1995 and 2007, there’s a strong chance you have it. That’s when Kitec was most commonly installed across the Sacramento area, including Buckeye. Builders used it because it was cheap and fast to install.
If you’re not sure, call us. We can come out, verify what you have, and tell you whether replacement is urgent or if you’ve got a different system entirely. There’s no charge for us to look and give you a straight answer.
Most homes run between $5,000 and $15,000 for a complete Kitec replacement. Single-story homes with crawl space access tend to land on the lower end. Two-story homes or homes on concrete slabs cost more because there’s more demo and reconstruction involved.
The price includes removal of all Kitec materials, installation of new PEX or copper piping, permits, inspections, drywall repair, texture, and paint. We don’t quote you one number and then add fees as we go. You know the full cost before we start.
If your home has unusual layout challenges or if we find additional issues once walls are open – like rotted framing from previous leaks – we’ll talk to you about it before doing extra work. But the base repipe price covers everything listed above with no surprises.
Probably not. Most insurance policies don’t cover the cost of replacing Kitec because it’s considered a maintenance issue, not sudden damage. They’ll cover the water damage if a pipe bursts, but not the cost of preventing it.
That said, some insurers are now requiring Kitec replacement as a condition of coverage. If your policy is up for renewal and they’ve discovered you have Kitec, they may non-renew you or increase your premium until you replace it. In that case, paying for the repipe now saves you from losing coverage or paying inflated rates.
There was a class-action settlement years ago, but the deadline to file a claim has passed. You’re paying out of pocket for this one. The good news is that once it’s done, your home is insurable again at normal rates and you’ve eliminated a major liability.
Most homes take two to four days. Smaller single-story homes with accessible plumbing can be done in two days. Larger two-story homes or homes with complex layouts take closer to four.
We work during normal business hours and restore water service each evening unless we’re in the middle of a major section that can’t be left half-finished. You won’t be without water overnight.
The timeline includes demo, installation of new piping, pressure testing, inspection, and drywall repair. Paint needs a day or two to dry, so there may be a small gap between when we finish the plumbing and when we come back to do final touch-ups. We’ll walk you through the schedule before we start so you know what to expect each day.
You can, but you’ll take a hit. Buyers either walk away entirely or demand a price reduction that’s usually more than the cost of replacing it yourself. Lenders and inspectors flag it immediately, and most buyers aren’t willing to inherit the problem.
If you’re planning to sell in the next few years, replacing the Kitec before listing makes more sense. You’ll get full market value for your home instead of selling at a discount. You also avoid deal-killers during escrow when a buyer’s inspector finds it and the whole transaction falls apart.
Even if you’re not selling soon, the system is going to fail. Kitec has a 100% eventual failure rate. The fittings corrode, the pipes burst, and the damage costs more to fix than the repipe would have cost in the first place. You’re better off handling it now while you can plan for it instead of waiting for an emergency.
PEX is flexible plastic tubing that’s faster to install and costs less. It’s durable, doesn’t corrode, and handles freeze conditions better than copper because it can expand slightly. Most repipes today use PEX because it’s reliable and keeps costs down.
Copper is the traditional choice. It lasts decades, doesn’t degrade, and some people just prefer it because it’s been the standard for so long. It costs more because the material is pricier and it takes longer to install – every joint has to be soldered.
Both are vastly superior to Kitec. PEX won’t corrode or burst the way Kitec does. Copper won’t either. The choice comes down to budget and personal preference. If you want the job done faster and cheaper without sacrificing quality, go with PEX. If you want the longest possible lifespan and don’t mind paying more, go with copper. We install both, and we’ll walk you through the pros and cons based on your specific home.
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