This brings up a good point, the 25 y.o. pipe buried from the meter to the pool heater distribution. If the above ground connection is showing as much rust, I dread to think how bad is the buried pipe. It seems as if they did a poor job of making sure that it didn't rust. Should I dig up parts of the pipe to inspect the rust damage or should I replace it all while I am working on this?
All of a sudden, this grew from replacing the final connection with 3 elbow joints to replacing 20 feet of piping, some of which runs under the driveway?