The Orange County Home Inspector gets asked about galvanized plumbing versus copper plumbing.

This question comes up when I do older home inspections in Los Angeles and San Diego.

Pipes carry water and if the pipes aren’t leaking and the water pressure is good, between 40 psi and 80 psi, then your galvanized pipes are ok, you don’t need a plumbing re-pipe. I did a property inspection in Los Angeles and a property inspection in San Diego recently where the houses were built in the 1940’s. On both of these properties the owners had owned the properties for thirty plus. When I did the property inspections I found that both properties had a combination of galvanized and copper. The owners fixed, repaired, and or replaced the faulty plumbing on as ‘as needed’ basis. This method of property maintenance makes perfect sense to me. 

In the event that you are doing a large remodel where you’ll be opening up the walls, then by all means do a re-pipe but if not just fix it as needed and you’ll save a lot of money.