>Any idea how much time it took?
This was a slab leak. The contractor wanted to remove the hot water heater, break down the walls (for access) and jack hammer the floor to figure out which pipe was leaking. He said all that was necessary to just find the leak. He suspected the leaky pipe was one going under the slab to the closest bathroom (he was wrong), then there was the bypass through the walls and ceiling on top of that.
After I said "hell no" and made up my mind to do it myself I started making strategic cuts in the sheet rock. There are six going into the ground in a wall behind the hot water heater, three hot, three cold. I knew the leak was on the hot side because the leak stops when I shut off the water supply to the hot water heater. The pipes are in a real terrible spot, in a wall between the hot water heater and the gas heater. Doing a lot of detective work by feeling the pipes and listening to them with a stethoscope I was able to figure out that the leaking pipe was actually a 3/4 in pipe that eventually runs up to supply hot water to the showers up stairs. After figuring out the problem I set up a temporary piping system to deliver the hot water to the showers that was outside the walls, for that I used these press-on "sharkbite" fittings and PEX piping. That part was kinda easy and it bought me some time to figure out a more permanent solution. I took a few days and made a few more cuts in the walls and ceiling of the laundry closet to figure out the plan. The townhouse is sort of a stupid design, but one good thing about it is that the utility stuff is all kinda close together. There is a bit of a space above the laundry area where the ht water heater sits that has a low ceiling and houses ducts for the heating and such. I used that space to run the pipe after capping off the old path. This was my first time soldering pipes. I did copper to PEX and back to copper. If it were the drinking water I probably would have done copper all the way, but using PEX mad the job a lot faster and easier.
It is hard to say what my total time in is, but I'd say maybe 20 hours total including the time to educate myself on how to do it and the detective work. Labor was maybe eight hours. I still have to patch up the walls and paint though.
One thing I've really started to notice is that a lot of "pros" do sh## work, this might be more true around here than other places.
