British Columbia Cost Guides · Nanaimo
How Much Does Whole-Home Repiping Cost in Nanaimo, BC?
Typical cost in Nanaimo
$10,650
$5,800 low · $17,450 high
Whole-home supply repipe: new PEX or copper, fittings, access openings, old pipe abandoned or removed, reconnection, permit & pressure test · Updated July 2026
Repiping a whole house in Nanaimo costs $5,800 to $17,450 installed, and most homeowners pay around $10,650 for a two-storey home with three bathrooms. A repipe swaps the supply plumbing in the whole house — every hot and cold line from the main shut-off to the last tap — and leaves the drains alone. Most BC quotes land between $6,000 and $18,000, driven by how many fixtures the house has and how hard the runs are to reach. If your grey pipe is the reason you're reading this, the Poly-B page carries pricing specific to that job.
Labour in Nanaimo runs slightly under the BC average, so the lower half of the $6,000 to $18,000 provincial band is the sensible expectation for a standard house, roughly $5,500 to $12,000 on a single-storey with two bathrooms. No Nanaimo company publishes a repiping price, and the nearest verified Island figure is a Victoria firm's $5,000 to $10,000 for an 1,800 square foot home. The Old City and the streets above the harbour hold the pre-war houses where galvanized steel is still carrying water.
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By the PlumbingCosts.ca team — we track published contractor rates, supplier pricing, and permit fees across Canada because you deserve to know a fair price before anyone's in your basement.
Price by Job Type in Nanaimo
| Job | Low | Average | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Condo or townhouse | $3,400 | $5,350 | $7,750 |
| Single-storey house, 2 bathrooms | $5,350 | $8,250 | $11,650 |
| Two-storey family home, 3 bathrooms | $7,750 | $11,150 | $14,550 |
| Large or heritage home | $14,550 | $17,950 | $24,250 |
| Partial repipe — one floor, or a single wet wall | $1,450 | $3,900 | $7,750 |
What's in the Price — and What Isn't
In the price
- All hot and cold supply runs, main shut-off out to every fixture in the house
- New pipe, fittings, hangers, and either a central manifold or trunk-and-branch layout
- Access holes cut where the route needs them, insulation pulled back and replaced
- Old piping taken out where it can be reached, or capped and left in the joist bays where it can't
- Reconnection of taps, toilets, tub and shower valves, laundry, dishwasher, water heater, and outdoor bibs
- New quarter-turn shut-offs at fixtures, a pressure test, and the plumbing permit with its inspection
Costs extra
- Drains, waste, and vent piping, which is a separate system on a separate budget
- The buried service line out at the city meter, which is a different trade and a different trench
- Fixture upgrades: new taps, toilets, or a shower valve body you decide you want while it's open
- Drywall finishing and paint on quotes that price pipe only (+$500–2,000 on a clean job)
- Anything the inspector flags that predates this work, such as a missing backflow device or a fixture with no trap
Ask for the quote by fixture count and material. "Repipe the house, $12,500" can't be checked against a second bidder. "Fourteen fixtures, PEX-A with expansion fittings, manifold at the water heater, twenty-two access openings, permit included, drywall patched not painted" can — and it's the same information the second plumber needs to price the identical scope.
Calculate Your Estimate
What Moves the Price
- Fixture count, not floor area
- Plumbers and permit clerks both count the same way: sinks, toilets, tubs, showers, laundry, dishwasher, hose bibs. A 1,800 sq ft Victoria home with two bathrooms was published at $5,000–$10,000; a Vancouver two-storey with three sits at $8,000–$15,000. Square footage only matters because of what it usually contains.
- PEX or copper
- Material rates published in BC put PEX at $1.50–$8 per foot against copper at $2–$20. On a house needing 300 to 500 feet of pipe that's a few thousand dollars of difference, plus the labour of soldering joints that PEX makes by bending around the framing instead.
- How the house is built
- A crawlspace and an unfinished basement ceiling let a crew work from below and cut almost nothing. A slab-on-grade rancher or a two-storey with finished ceilings means the route runs through walls and closets, which is more labour and much more patching.
- What you're replacing and why
- Galvanized steel that's closing up with rust, thin-wall copper pinholing at the elbows, and Poly-B failing at its fittings all end in the same job but on different timelines. Copper pinholes are the one that tends to be found by a leak first and priced second.
- Who closes the walls
- Some BC companies state plainly that they patch and repair all drywall as part of the work. Others quote pipe only, with drywall repair and repainting at $500–$2,000 on a straightforward house. Neither is wrong; a quote that doesn't say which one it is can't be compared.
- Permit and inspection
- A repipe gets inspected while the pipe is still visible. BC contractors show it at $300–$600 on their own quotes. Municipal schedules price by fixture and start low — $156 for the first fixture plus $47 for each additional in Surrey, for example — so a full-house count is what pushes the line up.
Where a typical $10,650 job goes:
- Materials
- 38% · ~$4,047
- Labour
- 58% · ~$6,177
- Permit & disposal
- 4% · ~$426
How the Job Actually Goes
-
Assessment and fixture count
The plumber counts every fixture, checks the pipe material at the tank and under a sink or two, looks at water pressure, and decides whether the house needs everything or one branch. This is also where a partial job gets ruled in or out honestly.
Included in the quote; some shops charge a diagnostic that's credited back
-
Choosing the layout
Manifold layouts feed each fixture its own line from a central point, which is tidy and easy to isolate later. Trunk-and-branch uses fewer feet of pipe and suits houses with a long straight run. The choice changes both the material bill and the number of holes.
Design time, folded into the price
-
Access and rough-in
Openings get cut, new pipe is pulled through joists and studs, and the whole new system is built while the old one is still feeding the house. Most of the crew's hours land here.
The largest labour block, at $75–$120 per hour
-
Cut-over and old pipe out
Fixtures transfer to the new system in batches, valves and supply lines are replaced as each one moves, and the old pipe is pulled or capped. Water goes off in short windows rather than for the whole job.
Included; fixture shut-offs are a small material line
-
Pressure test and inspection
The system is charged and held at test pressure, the inspector sees it open, and only then does anything get closed. A failed test at this stage costs an afternoon; a failed joint behind finished drywall costs a ceiling.
Permit $300–$600 on published BC quotes
-
Closing up
Drywall back, taped, textured, primed, painted. Depending on the contract this is the plumber's crew, a sub they bring, or your own trades — the one step where the paperwork differs from company to company.
$500–$2,000 on a clean job, more where ceilings came down
Do It Yourself or Hire a Pro?
Doing it yourself
- PEX itself is homeowner-friendly pipe: it cuts with a $20 tool and turns corners without a single fitting
- Demolition and clean-up are worth real money on a job where BC crews bill $75 to $120 per hour
- Isolating one bathroom, a bar sink, or a laundry line is a weekend project a confident DIYer can genuinely finish
- The house as a whole is permitted, inspected work, and an unpermitted repipe surfaces at sale and at claim time
- Fitting systems aren't interchangeable — PEX-A expansion, PEX-B crimp, and press copper each need their own tool, and the wrong ring on the wrong pipe is a leak with a delay fuse
- Getting a line from a basement to a second-floor ensuite without opening the whole stairwell is the part experience pays for
- Half a repipe is the worst outcome available: you've paid to open the walls and left the original failing pipe upstream of the new work
Hiring a licensed pro
- Fewest openings for the most pipe, which controls the part of the budget you can't see on the plumbing line
- The house keeps water most nights, because a crew stages the cut-over instead of killing the system on day one
- Permit, inspection, and pressure test on file — the documents that make the plumbing a non-issue when you sell
- Warranty on both labour and material, from someone insured for what water does to a finished house
- A five-figure bill for something no visitor will ever see
- Days of dust, holes, and furniture in the middle of rooms while the crew works the route
Our take: Repiping is one of the few plumbing jobs where the whole-house version is genuinely cheaper per fixture than doing it in pieces — the crew, the openings, and the permit are paid for once. Do the demolition and the decorating yourself if you want to save; leave the pipe, the cut-over, and the inspection to a licensed plumber.
Signs It's Time to Replace
- Rusty or brown water on the first draw in the morning, from galvanized lines closing up with scale
- Water pressure that dropped over years rather than overnight, and dropped everywhere at once
- A second or third pinhole leak in copper — the first one is bad luck, the third one is the pipe telling you its age
- Repairs happening often enough that you know the plumber's schedule
- Grey Poly-B, which has its own failure mode and its own page on this site
- A renovation that's already opening the walls, which makes the marginal cost of repiping the lowest it will ever be
How to Keep the Cost Down
- Repipe once, not room by room. The openings, the crew day, and the permit are paid for whether you do four fixtures or fourteen
- Time it with other work. A kitchen or bathroom renovation, a new water heater, or a softener install shares the same open walls and the same shut-down
- Choose PEX unless something specific argues for copper. On 300 to 500 feet of pipe the material gap alone runs into the thousands, before the soldering hours
- Take the finishing out of the plumbing quote if your contractor will let you. Drywall and paint bought direct is cheaper than the same work carried as a line item
- Get three quotes on an identical written scope — same fixture count, same material, same number of openings. Repipe pricing spreads wider than almost any other plumbing job in BC
- Empty the house of what's in the way beforehand. Crews charge for the hours they spend moving your furniture
Nanaimo Notes: Permits, Homes, Rates
Gas permits route through Technical Safety BC ($116 on a contractor permit, 2026); the City of Nanaimo's plumbing permit is a $40 minimum plus $8, so a straight swap is about $48.
The city climbs away from the water, so older houses are half-buried in the slope with a walk-out below. That lower level is usually where the water heater and the main trunk live, and an unfinished ceiling over it saves real money on openings. Pre-war houses here are small, which keeps the fixture count down; a suite added later puts it back up again.
Slightly below BC average.
Questions to Ask Before You Hire
- How many fixtures are you pricing, and what layout — manifold or trunk-and-branch?
- PEX-A, PEX-B, or copper, and why that choice for this house?
- How many access openings, and who patches, textures, and paints them?
- Is the plumbing permit and inspection in this number?
- How many nights will the house be without water?
- Are you removing the old pipe or leaving it capped in the walls?
- What's covered by your warranty, for how long, and does it include water damage from a fitting you installed?
While the Plumber Is There
Call-out time is a big share of any bill — if one of these applies to your home, pricing it in the same visit usually beats a separate appointment.
If the pipe you're replacing is grey and stamped PB2110, that job has its own published BC pricing, its own insurance angle, and its own drywall question. Start there instead.
Hard water is what shortened the life of the pipe you're pulling out. The cheapest moment to plumb in treatment is while the main is already cut and the crew is already there.
A tub and shower valve is buried in the wall that's about to be open anyway. Doing it later means paying a second time for the same hole.
Common Questions
Whole-Home Repiping Costs Across British Columbia
| City | Typical range | Average |
|---|---|---|
| Abbotsford | $5,900–$17,650 | $10,800 |
| Burnaby | $6,500–$19,450 | $11,900 |
| Chilliwack | $5,750–$17,300 | $10,550 |
| Coquitlam | $6,300–$18,900 | $11,550 |
| Delta | $6,250–$18,700 | $11,450 |
| Kamloops | $5,700–$17,100 | $10,450 |
| Kelowna | $6,000–$18,000 | $11,000 |
| Langley | $6,100–$18,350 | $11,200 |
| Maple Ridge | $6,100–$18,350 | $11,200 |
| Nanaimo (this page) | $5,800–$17,450 | $10,650 |
| New Westminster | $6,350–$19,100 | $11,650 |
| North Vancouver | $6,650–$20,000 | $12,200 |
| Port Coquitlam | $6,250–$18,700 | $11,450 |
| Port Moody | $6,300–$18,900 | $11,550 |
| Prince George | $5,650–$16,900 | $10,350 |
| Richmond | $6,500–$19,450 | $11,900 |
| Saanich | $6,300–$18,900 | $11,550 |
| Surrey | $6,300–$18,900 | $11,550 |
| Vancouver | $6,700–$20,150 | $12,300 |
| Victoria | $6,350–$19,100 | $11,650 |
| West Vancouver | $6,850–$20,500 | $12,550 |