Your main water service line is different from the pipes inside your walls: it's the single run from the city meter to your house that everything else depends on. A joint leak or a localized break on that line is a repair. Replacement is the right call when the line fails repeatedly at different points, when the pipe material itself is the problem rather than one bad connection, or when a pressure or flow problem traces back to internal corrosion narrowing the whole run rather than a single blockage.
Two pipe materials cause most of the main-line failures we see in DFW. Galvanized steel service lines, common in older homes, corrode from the inside — the pipe can look intact from outside while its usable diameter has narrowed for decades, showing up as gradually worsening pressure before it eventually fails outright. Polybutylene, the gray plastic pipe widely installed in DFW homes built through the 1980s and 90s, is a known, well-documented failure point — it degrades from chemical reactions with water treatment chemicals and tends to fail suddenly rather than gradually. If your service line is one of these materials, replacement isn't a matter of if but when, and we'll tell you honestly if a repair is genuinely still worth doing or just delaying the inevitable.
A water service line can be replaced two ways. Trenching the run is the straightforward option at $3,499 and works when the path is open ground. Where a driveway, sidewalk, mature trees or hardscape sit in the way, we bore the new line directionally instead at $4,999 — it costs more but leaves what is above it intact. One more thing worth knowing if your home is older than the 1980s or sits in an older part of Dallas: some service lines from that era used lead, and if a plumber flags lead service line material at your home, replacement is not something to defer. We'll always be straight with you about disruption before we start — yard restoration is part of the quote, not an afterthought.