How I first learned what a lead water line looked like

I can still remember seeing my first lead service water line. I was a plumbing apprentice working in Squirrel Hill, and I was absolutely shocked. I asked the master plumber on site what the material was, and he said, that is lead. This was right when everybody was talking about lead paint and lead in children’s toys and how dangerous it was, and here I was looking at a water line feeding a 10-to-20-unit apartment building, made out of lead. It floored me.

Here is something most people do not realize: traditionally, the homeowner (or the commercial owner) owns the water service from the curb stop into the house, and all the plumbing throughout the home. So historically, that pipe was your problem.

Why is the city paying to replace lead lines?

So a few years later, when I started hearing about lead water-line issues across Pittsburgh, I was genuinely surprised to hear the city was paying to have them replaced. Think about it this way: imagine you are a furnace guy, and suddenly the city announces it is going to pay to replace people’s furnaces. It just does not happen, and we are not talking about small money. The city paid plumbing contractors to go around and swap lead service lines out for 1-inch type K copper.

I am going to keep this factual and stay in my lane as a plumber. The point that matters for you as a homeowner is simple: the city has been replacing lead service lines, and that work has been going on across Pittsburgh.

The mineral layer, and why a disturbed lead pipe is the real risk

Let me go back to that Squirrel Hill job, because the master plumber taught me something I have never forgotten. Once we cut the old lead line out, he showed me that the water was not actually touching the lead. Over many years, a mineral layer builds up on the inside of the pipe, and the water travels through that mineral lining, not the lead itself.

Fair enough. But here is the catch. If that line gets physically disturbed, or if the chemical makeup of the water changes and that protective layer gets stripped away, now the water is running through bare lead. That is the real danger with old lead pipe, and it is why this became such a serious issue.

What “lead free” actually means now

This is the part I want every homeowner to understand, and I want the numbers right. The legal definition of “lead free” plumbing changed in a big way:

• The old standard allowed plumbing components to contain up to 8.0 percent lead.
• Effective January 2014, under the Reduce Lead in Drinking Water Act, that dropped to a weighted average of 0.25 percent lead across the wetted surfaces of pipes, fittings and fixtures.
• Old solder, the stuff joining copper pipe together, could be up to 50 percent lead.

So essentially, as an industry, we went from low-lead to no-lead. Anything we install today is 100 percent lead free. But if you have older water lines and old soldered joints in your home, there is likely still some lead in there, even if your service line is fine. That is the whole reason I push the advice I do.

What I tell every Pittsburgh homeowner to do

I have used reverse osmosis my entire life. I get clean disinfected water to my house, and I am grateful for it, but I do not drink it straight, and here is the plan I recommend:

• Put in a reverse-osmosis system for drinking water. This is your first line of defense. It pulls heavy metals like lead, plus the other contaminants, out of the water you actually drink and cook with. See our reverse-osmosis page for how it works.
• Add whole-home water filtration. Drinking water comes first, but treating the whole house is the next step.
• Get a plumbing tune-up. Have us go through the home so you know what you actually have.
• Have your water service evaluated. Let us find out whether it is actually lead and what condition it is in. If you do have lead or galvanized pipe in the home, a lead-pipe replacement or whole-home repipe may be the right call.
• Make sure your main shutoff works. This is a big one. We will tag it so you know exactly where it is in an emergency.