Pipe repair is the work behind most of the water damage we see in Manhattan apartments. A supply line splits in a freezing hallway, a galvanized riser finally corrodes through after ninety years, a copper joint weeps where solder has aged. The pipe itself failed — finding it and fixing the pipe (not just the leak it caused) is what stops the problem from coming back in the same wall next winter.
The pipe problems we fix
- Frozen and burst supply lines — exposed risers in prewar hallways and uninsulated exterior walls split when water freezes. Common from December through March in older walk-ups.
- Corroded galvanized steel — the original supply piping in many East Village and Lower East Side tenements. It narrows from the inside with rust and scale until pressure drops to a trickle on the top floor, then pinholes through.
- Leaking copper — aged solder joints, mechanical fittings that have loosened, and pinholes from electrolysis where dissimilar metals meet.
- Cast iron drain and stack cracks — the vertical waste stacks in older buildings crack with age, leaking behind walls and ceilings.
- Pinhole leaks in supply runs — small, slow, and exactly the kind of thing that ruins a ceiling over months before anyone notices.
Repair or replace the section?
The right fix depends on what failed and how. A single frozen split in an otherwise sound copper line is a clean section replacement. A pinhole in one spot of a galvanized riser that's ninety years old is a different conversation — that riser is failing everywhere, and patching one hole means another opens a few months later. We tell you which situation you're in. When a full repipe is the honest answer, we say so and scope it; when a localized repair will hold, we do that and leave the rest alone.
Wherever we replace, we match the existing system or upgrade it appropriately: copper to copper, or PEX where a flexible run makes sense and local code allows. We pressure-test every repair before the wall goes back up, because the worst time to find a bad joint is after the drywall is patched and painted.
How this relates to leak repair
Pipe repair and leak repair overlap but start from different ends. Leak repair begins with a symptom — a ceiling stain, a meter that moves — and traces it to the source, which often turns out to be a pipe that needs repair. Pipe repair begins with the pipe itself: you already know a riser burst or a section is corroded, and the job is to fix that pipe. If you're not sure where the water is coming from, start with leak diagnosis. If a pipe is visibly split or spraying, you're already in emergency territory — shut the main and call.
Pipes that fail from freezing are preventable. After a repair we'll point out exposed runs that should be insulated before the next cold snap — see outdoor plumbing for the same freeze-protection work on exterior lines.