Copper leach ?

I built my house 17 years ago and ran all good grade copper for the plumbing. My well water was acidic (5 - 5.5 Ph ) and the last year or two I have noticed blue stain in my shower i'm assuming from the copper leaching from the acidic water. I drilled a new well last fall, have 7.2 Ph and the blue stains have stopped, but once the copper leaches will it always do it slightly even though i'm not seeing it now just because the process was already started?

The pipes should be stable with the pH near neutral, but that doesn't mean that over those 17-years, there aren't places where the pipes are a lot thinner than they were. You can think of that blue stuff similar to rust on iron...the metal was eaten up by the acid and combined with various other minerals in the water to produce those stains.

Have you had any pinhole leaks yet?

Hackney plumbing said:

Have you had any pinhole leaks yet?

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Not even going to open my mouth because it's asking for trouble if I do! lol. I plan on re-plumbing actually. Don't know if i'm kean on it but I bought pex pipe to redo the whole house about 6 months ago, just havent done it yet. Now that the staining is gone, if the copper wouldn't still be leaching into the water, I may leave it go a while until i have to do it?

Brokersdad said:

Not even going to open my mouth because it's asking for trouble if I do! lol. I plan on re-plumbing actually. Don't know if i'm kean on it but I bought pex pipe to redo the whole house about 6 months ago, just havent done it yet. Now that the staining is gone, if the copper wouldn't still be leaching into the water, I may leave it go a while until i have to do it?

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Its most likely bad but before you start tearing it all out you could cut a section out of the hot and cold or just cut the pipe into and check the wall thickness. You might could take a screwdriver and press on the pipe itself and see it flex.........turn the water off before you try that. LOL

The idea is to find out the wall thickness of the tube. If its thin I would go ahead and replace it. Things tend to fail at the worst times and may even cause damage to the house and your stuffssss.

You could just get some channelocks and give it a sqeeze. Dont do that to soft copper!