Kanji:
First check with your local building department. Depending on where you are in the Bay Area, you may not be allowed to use anything but copper. I prefer copper, but it is very expensive, so we generally use pvc/cpvc where we can now. Again depending on where you are in the BA, you have some of the best water available in the whole country (Hetch Hetchy), and because of that you generally have fewer problems with corrosion.

Costs will depend on how much piping needs to be installed (related to the size of the house and the number of fixtures) and the ease to which they can be installed, such as whether the plumber has to work in a crawlspace or an unfinished basement. We'd need to know more about your house before we could even guess at a ballpark figure.

Hopefully you'll get several replies. Our repiping was about $10,000 when the dust had settled (literally). This included the basic repiping, and sheetrock patching, texturing and painting. We had more sheetrock to patch than the average, since our house is on a slab, and doesn't have a full attic. We have 2 bathrooms, kitchen, laundry room, and 5 outdoor spigots. All were redone, as you would expect.

I wasn't very happy with the repiping company that I used. They left too many cosmetic problems for me to fix, and ruined a faucet that I eventually had to replace. All the exterior caulking that they did will have to be replaced, it was the sloppiest caulking I've ever paid someone to do (included in their bid).

The basic plumbing that they did was fine, but they were more focused on speed than doing the right thing to have a reasonable amount of work for me to when they were done. I would not use them again. We're still working through the cosmetics stuff. I'm sure that there's a company out there doing this that isn't so focused on getting to the next job that they take the time to cause less damage.

-Roger

Thanks for the reply.

Here are some more details.
the house is 1189 sq. ft.
kitchen and old bath are also need to go. So plumber does not have to worry about cosmetic stuff. Plenty of room in crawlspace ~4ft tall.
we are thinking of putting one more bath in.
So in total one kitchen, 2 bath, laundry, and two outlets outside(front and back each)

Your repiping should cost a lot less than ours...as long as you don't count the kitchen and bath remodels in the cost *smile*.

They should have easy access to your pipes, and very little repairs to do, sounds like.

By the way, I initially asked about PEX, but the company that I chose only did copper repiping.

-Roger

Assuming you rip out all the old drywall or plaster in the kitchen and bathrooms (in other words, the plumber has easy access to work inside the walls) I'd say you are looking at around $4,000 to $5,000 for PVC/CPVC (you only need CPVC for hot water pipes), and about $7,000 to $8,000 for copper. The cost will depend on whether they can run full-length pipes between the floor joists, or whether they have to drill through all the joists and run shorter pieces (in other words, whether the pipes will run parallel to the joists, or at right angles to them).

PEX should be cheaper, thanks to reduced labor costs, but we decided not to use PEX in any of our jobs because we've heard of many problems with rodents chewing through the PEX, and no matter where you are in the BA, you will have rodents.

rodents?

seriously? even if I make sure all the openings are properly patched/closed?

I guess with rodents they will always find their way through.

two contractors will come to do the estimate, I will ask.

Thanks for the heads up.

Matt,

We are also in the SF Bay area (Monterey Bay, actually), and the basic cost of our galvanized steel -> copper repipe was about $8500, including cutting into and patching walls, and having to run pipes through ceilings and walls. And again, 2 bathrooms, kitchen, and laundry room.

I'd bet that using our repiping as a price point, that the OP would be looking at less than $5000 for his (with less pipe, easier access, and no patching) for copper. But I don't do this stuff, I'm just a consumer (*smile*).

-Roger

I think you got a very good price there, Roger, especially if it was recent. The price of copper is going up almost daily, so fast it's hard to keep current with estimates. (Of course, it depends on how much galvanized you used; we don't use galvy at all.)

While we do a lot of basic plumbing, I do sub the big or complicated stuff out, and the figures I gave are in line with the cost of recent jobs we've had, here in the greater Sacramento area. I've found that the extra cost of having to cut into and repair walls is not really that big of a factor.

one contractor came yesterday afternoon.
He quoted ~$7500 for my place.

I will ask couple more contractors.

Matt,

About $1500 of the $8500 contract I had was for "wall patching".

And I certainly agree that the price of copper has gone up since Katrina. The person who bid our job pointed that out, and I confirmed that independently, as well.

Hopefully kanji4ever will keep us up on the bids he gets. It may be that the guys that I used could bid lower because repiping is really their business. There's a lot of houses in this area that were built with galvanized steel pipes like mine, and are hitting the point where water flow is getting to be too low.

I don't know who he's getting bids from, plumbers or companies that specialize in repiping. There are at least 2 companies that specialize in repiping in our area.

-Roger