British Columbia Cost Guides · Burnaby
How Much Does Poly-B Pipe Replacement Cost in Burnaby, BC?
Typical cost in Burnaby
$12,950
$6,500 low · $19,450 high
Whole-home replacement: new PEX & fittings, wall openings, old Poly-B pulled or abandoned, reconnection, permit & pressure test · Updated July 2026
Replacing Poly-B supply piping in Burnaby costs $6,500 to $19,450 installed, and most homeowners pay around $12,950 for a three-bathroom detached house. Poly-B is the grey flexible supply pipe that went into British Columbia houses from 1978 into the late 1990s, and these are prices to take all of it out and run PEX in its place. The figure covers the new pipe and fittings, the wall and ceiling openings needed to reach the old runs, pulling or abandoning the Poly-B, reconnecting every fixture, a pressure test and the permit. Drywall finishing is the one line that moves between quotes, so check who owns it before comparing two numbers.
Burnaby splits down the middle on this. The 1950s and 60s houses through the centre of the city predate Poly-B entirely and went in on copper or galvanized. The grey pipe lives in the 1980s and early-90s layer: townhouse complexes, the low-rise apartments around Metrotown and Brentwood, and infill houses of that decade. Budget $12,000 to $18,000 for a detached house with three bathrooms; a townhouse or apartment unit is a $4,000 to $10,000 job. Rates track close to Vancouver, and the city's plumbing permit is $121 for the first fixture plus $67 for each one after.
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By the PlumbingCosts.ca team — we track published contractor rates, supplier pricing, and permit fees across Canada because you deserve to know a fair price before anyone's in your basement.
Price by Job Type in Burnaby
| Job | Low | Average | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Condo or small home, 1–2 bathrooms | $4,300 | $7,550 | $10,800 |
| Detached house, 3 bathrooms | $12,950 | $16,200 | $19,450 |
| Large, heritage, or custom-built home | $19,450 | $22,700 | $27,000 |
| PEX pipe and fittings — the material share alone | $1,600 | $4,300 | $8,650 |
| Drywall patching and paint, where it's quoted separately | $550 | $3,250 | $10,800 |
What's in the Price — and What Isn't
In the price
- Every run of grey pipe in the house, from the main shut-off out to the last fixture
- New PEX, manifolds or tees, and potable-rated crimp or expansion fittings
- Cutting the access openings the route needs — walls, ceilings, and sometimes a soffit
- Pulling the old Poly-B out where it comes free, and abandoning it in place where it's stapled into a joist bay
- Reconnecting fixtures, the water heater, laundry, and hose bibs, usually with fresh shut-off valves
- A pressure test on the new system, plus the municipal plumbing permit and inspection
Costs extra
- Drywall board, taping, texture, and paint, unless the quote uses those words (+$500–10,000)
- Poly-B buried under a slab or running out to a detached garage, which gets re-routed rather than swapped
- Drying, mould remediation, or restoration if a line already failed
- Drain, waste, and vent piping — this job is supply pipe only
- New taps, toilets, or a water heater, though the labour to swap them is never cheaper than while the water is off
Two quotes on this job are only comparable when both state who owns the drywall. One Fraser Valley company advertises a single flat number that covers removal, the repipe, patching, and paint. Another Metro Vancouver company starts around $8,000 for the pipe and prices drywall repair at $5,000 to $10,000 on top. Same house, same grey pipe, and the two pieces of paper are $10,000 apart before anyone picks up a tool. Ask for it line by line, in writing, with the finish level named — patched, primed, or painted to match.
Calculate Your Estimate
What Moves the Price
- How many bathrooms, and how many floors
- The clearest lever in the published BC numbers. Two Vancouver companies price a house with one or two bathrooms at $6,000–$10,000 and a three-bathroom home at $12,000–$18,000, with custom builds past $20,000. Each extra wet room is another set of runs, another cut-over, and another day.
- Whether the plumber can reach the pipe
- An unfinished basement ceiling, an open attic, or a crawlspace under the whole footprint is the cheap version. Finished ceilings on both floors mean the route gets opened from below, and one Vancouver company puts the spread at $8 to $15 per linear foot depending purely on access.
- Drywall, texture, and paint
- The single biggest swing in the whole job, and the one homeowners get surprised by. BC companies quote it anywhere from $500–$2,000 on an easy house to $5,000–$10,000 where ceilings come down. A Kelowna company prices it at $1,000–$3,000 and ties that line explicitly to whether walls have to open at all.
- PEX or copper
- Nearly every BC repipe goes back in as PEX. Choosing copper roughly doubles the material bill at the low end and quadruples it at the high end — one Vancouver company's fittings line runs $1,500–$8,000 in plastic against $2,500–$15,000 in copper, and a Kelowna shop puts copper at two to four times PEX.
- Permit and inspection
- This is permitted plumbing work. BC contractors carry it on the quote at $200–$600 depending on the city. The municipal side is priced per fixture rather than per house — schedules run from a $40 minimum in Nanaimo to $282 for the first three fixtures in Vancouver, so a whole-house count sits at the upper end of that.
- Whether a line has already let go
- A dry house is a plumbing job. A house where a fitting split behind a bedroom wall is a plumbing job plus drying, mould remediation, and finishing — a Kelowna contractor puts a flood-and-remediation version at three to five times the $7,000–$15,000 base.
Where a typical $12,950 job goes:
- Materials
- 42% · ~$5,439
- Labour
- 55% · ~$7,123
- Permit & disposal
- 3% · ~$389
How the Job Actually Goes
-
Confirming it's actually Poly-B
Grey, slightly dull, flexible pipe with PB2110 stamped along it, usually met with plastic fittings and a copper or aluminum crimp ring. It shows at the water heater, under sinks, and at the laundry box. Blue and black versions exist too, which is why the stamp matters more than the colour.
Free on a quoting visit, 20–30 minutes
-
Planning the route and the openings
The plumber counts fixtures, decides between a manifold at the water heater or a trunk-and-branch layout, and marks every hole the route needs. Fewer, better-placed openings is the difference between a $1,500 drywall bill and a $6,000 one.
Included in the quote
-
Opening the walls and ceilings
Access gets cut, insulation pulled back, and the old runs traced. This is the day the house looks worst and the day the scope becomes real — anything hidden behind the drywall shows up now, not at quoting.
Labour at $75–$120 per hour on BC published rates
-
Running the new PEX
New pipe goes in complete, tested, and parallel to the old system wherever the layout allows, so the house keeps water while the work goes on. PEX bends around framing that copper would need fittings for, which is most of why it took over BC repipes.
$2,500–$6,000 in pipe and fittings on a typical three-bedroom home
-
Cut-over, removal, and pressure test
Fixtures move onto the new system one at a time, the water goes off for an hour or two rather than for days, and the Poly-B comes out where it pulls free. The system is pressurized and held before anything gets closed up, and the inspector sees it open.
Included; the permit line runs $200–$600 on BC quotes
-
Drywall, texture, and paint
Board back in, taped, textured to match, primed, painted. Matching a stipple ceiling is its own trade and it's the reason this step gets quoted separately by some companies and bundled by others.
$500–$10,000 depending on how much came down and who's doing it
Do It Yourself or Hire a Pro?
Doing it yourself
- Opening the walls is unskilled work. Pulling baseboards, cutting access holes on the plumber's marks, and hauling debris is a real saving on a job billed at $75–$120 an hour
- The finishing end is yours if you want it: hire your own drywall finisher and painter rather than buying that trade through the plumber's markup
- Clearing closets, moving furniture, and boxing up the laundry room before the crew arrives buys back hours
- Potable water piping needs a permit in every BC municipality, and an unpermitted repipe is a discussion with your insurer and with the buyer's inspector at sale
- Poly-B fails at the fittings, so a partial DIY leaves the original acetal connections buried in a wall you just closed up
- Expansion and crimp tooling for PEX costs more to rent for a week than the fitting package costs to buy
- Finding every run is the actual skill. Grey pipe turns up behind tubs, above stipple ceilings, and inside exterior walls, and one missed length means the job isn't finished
Hiring a licensed pro
- A crew that repipes weekly cuts the fewest holes, which is what keeps the drywall bill down
- Permit, inspection, and a pressure test on record — the paperwork a buyer's agent asks for later
- Fixture-by-fixture cut-over, so the house usually keeps water overnight through a two- to five-day job
- Workmanship warranty on pipe and fittings, from someone who carries liability insurance for water damage
- It's the most disruptive plumbing work a lived-in house goes through short of a sewer dig
- Quotes vary more than on any other plumbing job, mostly because of what the drywall line does or doesn't say
Our take: The pipe work is a licensed plumber's, and there's no version where it isn't. What's genuinely available to you is the demolition and the finishing at either end: open the access holes yourself on the plumber's marks, and hire your own drywaller and painter afterwards. That's where the $500-versus-$10,000 spread lives, and it's the only part of this job you can meaningfully price-shop.
Signs It's Time to Replace
- Grey flexible pipe stamped PB2110 at the hot water tank, under a vanity, or at the laundry box
- The house was built between 1978 and 1998, which is the whole BC Poly-B era
- A plastic fitting weeping, staining the joist below it, or already wearing a hose clamp someone put on years ago
- A ceiling stain under a bathroom that dried and came back
- Your insurer asking what material the supply piping is at renewal — some BC insurers will not write or renew a Poly-B house, and others surcharge it or carve water damage out of the policy
- A pre-sale inspection report naming it, which is where plenty of BC owners first hear the word
How to Keep the Cost Down
- Make every quote itemize the drywall line, and say what finish it ends at. The published BC spread runs $500 to $10,000 on the same task, and no other line item on this job moves that far
- Hire the finishing trades yourself. A drywall finisher and a painter booked direct cost less than the same two people carried on a plumbing invoice
- Stay with PEX unless you have a specific reason not to. Copper runs two to four times the material cost and buys nothing a BC homeowner can feel at the tap
- Book the walls open once. A bathroom renovation, a new tank, or a water softener costs a fraction to plumb while the route is already exposed
- Watch for repipe promotions in the slow months — one Vancouver company advertises ten percent off repipes booked by January, which on a $14,000 job is real money
- Deal with it before a fitting splits. A dry-house repipe is a scheduled job; the same house after a burst line adds drying, remediation, and finishing to the same pipe bill
Burnaby Notes: Permits, Homes, Rates
Burnaby operates its own gas permit program, one of the few BC municipalities that does. Its gas permit is $70 for the first appliance ($39 each additional), with the city's plumbing permit at $121 for the first fixture.
Townhouse complexes of that vintage tend to get done building by building rather than unit by unit, which is cheaper per home and slower to organize, since the strata has to vote it. Detached 1980s houses in Burnaby often have a suite downstairs, and that redraws the access map: a finished lower-floor ceiling is the difference between a $500 drywall line and a $6,000 one.
Rates track close to Vancouver.
Questions to Ask Before You Hire
- Is drywall repair, texture, and paint in this price, and does it end at patched, primed, or painted to match?
- How many openings will you cut, and can you mark them before I sign?
- PEX-A or PEX-B, expansion or crimp fittings, and what warranty comes with each?
- Are you removing the old Poly-B or abandoning it in place, and does that change the price?
- Are you pulling the plumbing permit, and is the inspection inside this price?
- What happens to the number if you find grey pipe in a slab or an exterior wall?
- Is this a fixed price or an hourly rate with an estimate attached?
While the Plumber Is There
Call-out time is a big share of any bill — if one of these applies to your home, pricing it in the same visit usually beats a separate appointment.
A Poly-B job is a repipe with a specific reason behind it. If your house has a mix of grey pipe and tired galvanized or thin-wall copper, price the whole system at once — the labour and the drywall are already being paid for.
If something is wet and you don't know where it's coming from, a $99 to $700 locate answers whether one fitting failed or the system is going. That answer changes whether you're booking a repair or a repipe.
The repipe crew disconnects and reconnects the tank anyway. If it's past year eight, swapping it during the same visit costs a fraction of bringing a plumber back for it later.
Common Questions
Poly-B Pipe Replacement Costs Across British Columbia
| City | Typical range | Average |
|---|---|---|
| Abbotsford | $5,900–$17,650 | $11,750 |
| Burnaby (this page) | $6,500–$19,450 | $12,950 |
| Chilliwack | $5,750–$17,300 | $11,500 |
| Coquitlam | $6,300–$18,900 | $12,600 |
| Delta | $6,250–$18,700 | $12,500 |
| Kamloops | $5,700–$17,100 | $11,400 |
| Kelowna | $6,000–$18,000 | $12,000 |
| Langley | $6,100–$18,350 | $12,250 |
| Maple Ridge | $6,100–$18,350 | $12,250 |
| Nanaimo | $5,800–$17,450 | $11,650 |
| New Westminster | $6,350–$19,100 | $12,700 |
| North Vancouver | $6,650–$20,000 | $13,300 |
| Port Coquitlam | $6,250–$18,700 | $12,500 |
| Port Moody | $6,300–$18,900 | $12,600 |
| Prince George | $5,650–$16,900 | $11,300 |
| Richmond | $6,500–$19,450 | $12,950 |
| Saanich | $6,300–$18,900 | $12,600 |
| Surrey | $6,300–$18,900 | $12,600 |
| Vancouver | $6,700–$20,150 | $13,450 |
| Victoria | $6,350–$19,100 | $12,700 |
| West Vancouver | $6,850–$20,500 | $13,700 |