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I actually have the piece of pipe the plumber cut out when he fixed the leak, I could open it and have a look. It's only about 5" long, but it should suffice. The faucets appear to be fine, no issues so far with any of them. I replaced the kitchen one and it appeared to be original and was working properly when we pulled it. How would I introduce chlorine to the system? I know the water in our area is chlorinated, but when it was tested by the water softener sales guy (he was trying to sell me a de-chlorinator) it showed only small amounts. As a side note, when we were troubleshooting the softener, we put it in and out of bypass a couple of times. We finally left it that way and got quotes on a new one. We were also dealing with a low water pressure issue, which, after looking at the softener, we thought could be caused by the feed pipes to and from the softener being only 1/2", so we got the softener installer to replace the lines from the main to and from the softener with larger ones. Well, as the work was being done, we discovered that the old softener had ruptured internally, and released millions of little green resin beads into our water system. These clogged up every faucet in the house and also went into our brand new water heater. On the advice of a plumber who thought this could be causing the blue/green tint to our water, we flushed out the heater last weekend, but there were almost no beads in it. So we're back at copper being the source of the tint. Just thought I'd give you an idea of the fun we've been having at our new house. Cheers John

"Is it necessary, or a good idea to replace the areas of the house that were not included in the remodel, since the house is 25 years old since it is M copper?" Yes, do a total replacement, as the copper has reached it expected life expectancy. CPVC is widely used in mobil homes due to it's flexibility and lack of out-gassing at the glue joints. "Also, the plumber wants to use several island vents, including one in a bathroom. He doesn't want to go through the roof." You need to have a short and serious chat with your contractor about quality of workmanship, because this is BS. "And yes I think this is all about the general contractor saving money, my husband is afraid that if we push him too hard about the pipes he will charge us more on change orders/items that he has completed, but will not give us a price on." In many states all change orders are required in the business and professional code, to be fully priced upon presentation for signature. But, why would you sign an authorization to proceed, without knowing what it cost? "We ask him how much adding or changing something will be, instead of telling us he just builds it without giving a price or change order. We have asked him several times to write it up, but he does not, Its really irritating and yes my contract states that he must give us the change order in witting, before he changes anything." If you know an attny. better yet where he lives, don't wait until monday, race over to his house and break in.

Sooner or later this will be necessary. I owned a house for many years that was built in 1952. I remodeled and added to it in the 1980's and the new plumbing was copper. I wanted to replace the old galvanized, as well, I had a somewhat more difficult task than you, since my house was built on a slab and the galvanized was embedded in concrete, so I had to run lines through walls and ceilings where none existed before, which I did progressively over several years. I still remember when I ran new copper from the meter to the house. The galvanized I took out was about 40 years old, and when you looked down a 10' length of it you couldn't see daylight at the other end because there was so much corrosion. If it would have been a human, it would have been dead from arterial sclerosis! My advice is to go for it. You will save yourself a ton of money, compared to having a plumber do it. I don't know what your skills are, but this was the project where I first taught myself to sweat solder...and I still enjoy doing it. Your project sounds very doable, and you can do it over a period of time. You will probably need to cut into some walls to get at the various valves (toilet, shower, bath, etc.) that are plumbed to the galvanized, but it will be worth it. And when I sold the house, it made a difference to buyers that there was no galvanized left in the house. Regarding your waste lines, probably nothing is necessary.