DescentBB

Or, why I've been too busy to post as of late.





I've been occupied with summer projects, some planned, like a new fence, painting and some, as the above photos indicate, unplanned. On Wednesday, I go down to my basement in the morning and hear the dreaded, drip, drip. I look over to the middle of my basement and discover a large pool of water and water dribbling from the ceiling. Damn, this pisses me off. What a mess, just what I needed with so much other stuff going on. At least the water missed some paper items stored in boxes AND the smoke detector right next to it.

So after getting ready for no water, I shut off the water main and start draining the system, which takes a looooooooooong time. You can't solder the repair with any water in the pipes. I then have to cut out some of the ceiling foil and then cut out a 6 foot section of wet, soggy insulation, getting a bath in the process. I'm expecting a leaking fitting, but what I see is a small pinhole, in the middle of the 1/2 inch line, with another in the making right next to it. WTF! I guess I should be thankful. At least a pinhole only leaks a small amount of water initially and it was probably doing it all night by my estimation, since I didn't see anything the previous evening.

So I'm thinking, why is this happening? My house is only 19 years old. I thought copper pipe lasted longer than that! So I do some Googling. It turns out that pinholes are a common problem with many possible, but so far unproven, causes. Some say cavitation, some say soft water, hard water, too much flux etc., etc. Unfortunately, this pipe is also the thinnest available, type M, which is usually what cheap plumbers like to install in residential homes. My bad, I should have specced type L copper at least when I had the house built. Didn't even think about it at the time. Since this line goes to an outside faucet, my thinking is cavitation damage, because I think a 1/2 inch line is too small for the high flow rate. Also, too much flux is a possibility, which my plumber must have slathered on like mayonnaise judging from the appearance of his soldering at the joints. I'm also suspicious of bad copper pipe, but no manufacturer will admit to impurities in their products. It does say 'Made in Mexico' on some sections, but that's no proof.

So now I'm wondering about the integrity of the rest of my plumbing. Most of it is hidden in ceiling insulation, and the one section now visible is showing some of little dreaded green spots ON THE OUTSIDE of the pipe, which indicates more holes are forming and starting to ooze. Crap! I may have to replace all my home plumbing now. I'm not even considering PEX yet. Plastic has had a bad reputation.

Boo water leaks.

I'm in the midst of a big floor refinish/paint project in my living room, dining room, and kitchen.

I'm afraid of the day when leaks start to show up in all of my copper tubing in my house...

As far as I'm concerned PEX has matured quite a bit, whatever it once was. We sell Watts PEX products where I work. Grab yourself a crimp tool, a cutting tool, a bunch of stainless crimp rings (no need to check the crimp like you do with the copper rings), a bunch of brass or plastic barbed fittings, and a few rolls and straight lengths of red and blue PEX plus hanger hardware, and you should be able to re-plumb the entire thing in an afternoon without touching a torch (probably not including removal). Point of interest: most new houses plumbed with PEX use a very different plumbing scheme which leaves you with a shut-off manifold reminiscent of an electrical breaker box. Also Watts makes "Quick-Connect" fittings, sealed with o-rings which allow you to simply push it onto a pipe for a behind-the-wall rated seal, and is interchangeable with PEX, CPVC, and Copper.

You won't pay much less overall for PEX than you would to redo it in copper, I don't think, but it would be much simpler and it's good stuff.

I don't know, I'm still on the fence about that one. I have all the tools for doing copper and none for PEX. Plastic just seems a little weak to me and I keep remembering the polybutylene pipe failures years ago. There's also the leaching of MTBE from the plastic, but I guess copper and any flux is has it's own toxicity. I like the PEX manifold setup, but I can't get access inside the walls to get rid of all the copper without a major rip apart. I was thinking of just replacing the main runs, then fixing the inside wall runs if things fail. It'll still show up in the basement if that happens. And copper has the one side benefit that it doesn't allow the growth of bacteria inside the pipes either. I've already used type K copper for my irrigation system connection to the house system, so some of that part is already newer.

It was either flux or slag.

At first I thought it was electrical damage .. then I thought, on the INSIDE?? not likely.

Given the discoloration, I'd say you had a containment there for a while before it broke loose. probably eroded out under whatever was stuck.

I've done a ton of PEX, it is great. We have the expander pex tool with the rings, you double up the end of the pipe with the ring that fits around it, then expand it out with the tool and force it over a fitting, the pipe then shrinks back to fit over the fitting and at that point the only way to get it off is to burn it off with a torch (assuming it is a brass fitting anyway). It is also great for running pipes along in areas near outside walls where insulation is weak, because pex can expand so even if it freezes it won't break like copper or pvc will.

I like pex because it is so simple, it is pretty much impossible to get a joint wrong when you use the expander tool and fittings, and it has been very reliable for us for the last 15 years.

Sergeant Thorne wrote:Point of interest: most new houses plumbed with PEX use a very different plumbing scheme which leaves you with a shut-off manifold reminiscent of an electrical breaker box.

That thing's pretty crazy. Sure beats the hell out of one big valve on the main input like we have here.

Top Gun wrote:

Sergeant Thorne wrote:Point of interest: most new houses plumbed with PEX use a very different plumbing scheme which leaves you with a shut-off manifold reminiscent of an electrical breaker box.

That thing's pretty crazy. Sure beats the hell out of one big valve on the main input like we have here.

I'd still use a valve on the input.

We have one of those shut-off manifolds. It's come in pretty handy a time or two.

I got all interested in PEX, until I started doing some researching. There are a couple of current class action lawsuits dealing with fitting failures and something called "de-zincification" of the brass fittings. Apparently, a couple of manufacturers got a little cheap and decided that raising the zinc content of the fittings would save them a few bucks. Unfortunately, they quickly corrode and leak. There's also some concern about the chlorine in drinking water attacking the pipe, eroding and weakening the pipe walls. I suspect there is a lot of chlorine in our local city water because I can smell it at certain times of the year. So are you sure about the durability of PEX, Krom? It's still relatively untested long term in the U.S. for potable water systems. Sure, it's been around in sub-floor heating systems for way longer, but there is no chlorine in those systems either.

WOW. I just talked to an old builder friend of mine and he's had problems with pinholes in both copper pipes and the fittings in some of the homes he's built. He thinks it's because of the soft water here locally. He likes PEX as well, but he's only used it for 10 years. Decisions, decisions.

tunnelcat wrote:WOW. I just talked to an old builder friend of mine and he's had problems with pinholes in both copper pipes and the fittings in some of the homes he's built. He thinks it's because of the soft water here locally. He likes PEX as well, but he's only used it for 10 years. Decisions, decisions.

Sounds to me like one is known to fail (the copper) and the other is just unknown....

It's Pex! It puts the world of paradoxical plumbing to rights!

/silly obscurity.

snoopy wrote:

tunnelcat wrote:WOW. I just talked to an old builder friend of mine and he's had problems with pinholes in both copper pipes and the fittings in some of the homes he's built. He thinks it's because of the soft water here locally. He likes PEX as well, but he's only used it for 10 years. Decisions, decisions.

Sounds to me like one is known to fail (the copper) and the other is just unknown....

Can't win either way. Go for the product with a known problem, or go for something that hasn't had a long term reliability test. But PEX has those nice blue and red colors and that nice manifold setup. Much prettier than the old flux-slopped copper tree I have in the ceiling and far easier for draining things in the future. Plus, I can reinstall it within the trusses because it bends. The original copper was installed through the end of the house before the walls went up. Less joints that way, but I can very well do that now.

Pardon my plumbing ignorance, but would plain old PVC be another alternative option? Or is that something that's mainly just used for drainage?

"Potable" or drinking water is done in CPVC. It's cream-colored as opposed to the white, Schedule 40 "PVC". It's easily half the price of Copper or PEX around here. I helped my dad convert our house from Galvanized Steel to CPVC ~15 years ago (we actually took out some Lead as well), and we've had very few problems with it. It's potentially more brittle when exposed to cold, and generally more easily broken or busted. As long as you do the solvent/glue correctly, and adapt the hot water lines to galv. supply pipes correctly, and leave it alone, there's no reason it can't last a good long time. CPVC is the cheap alternative, and there's nothing terribly wrong with it; Copper is the high-price, durable (usually)/high-quality choice; and PEX is the cutting edge, still high-price choice which solves a lot of problems, is much easier to install, and allows for less resistance to flow due to lower fitting count, larger inner-diameter fittings (even more-so with Krom's, I noticed), and fewer abrupt (90 degree) turns. Less resistance to flow means more water pressure available.

Ah, okay, makes sense. I think pretty much all of the inlet lines around the house are copper, but I've never paid enough attention to see if there's anything else being used. Lord knows with the fly-by-night developer that built our place.

Thanks ST. I'm still looking at PEX because I like that manifold system, although I have seen CPVC around and I might take another look. I'm going to have to put in a pressure regulator too. I found our water pressure to be around 78 PSI and not dropping below 73 PSI during peak hours. The water hammer is horrible with our toilets and the Sioux Chief water hammer arresters that I have on my washing machine lines don't want to have over 60 PSI.

PEX is also supposed to help absorb water hammer, due to its flexible nature!

Yeah, that's another plus I was thinking about. Then I wouldn't have to have more of those water hammer arresters installed near the toilets. Do you have PEX in your home ST?

'Fraid not. I'm an inexperienced professional. I've been to classes, sold the stuff, and played with it, but still no PEX in the lines here. I'm living in and making the payments on my parents home right now, and they're funny about home improvement (when the roof falls in they may let me throw some cheap shingles up there). As soon as I can transition out of this situation and own my own home, it'll be PEX all the way (even out to my wind-powered, filtered well-water tower ).

That's good to hear that you'd put the stuff in your own home if you owned one. But better watch it installing it outside. PEX doesn't like UV exposure I hear.

If I ran it to a water tower it would have a protective covering and insulation.

I watched a video the other day about PEX, in the course of looking into some things, and found out that kinks in PEX pipe are repairable with heat, due to the structure of the pipe. I grabbed a 5' length off the shelf, bent it in half (kinks reduce flow, even after they're straightened), and whipped out the heat gun! Bringing the pipe to around 266 deg. F (temp. according to the source) caused it to go from a milky white to perfectly clear, and the kink came right out--once it had cooled it was gone, and I was able to flex the pipe with no failure from the previously kinked section! One of the sources I came across said there have been pressure tests after doing such a repair, and the eventual burst does not favor the location of the repair (it will burst somewhere else)! Hopefully you won't need to, but if you happen to end up with an extra length of PEX I would recommend trying it just for the cool factor!

Afterwards one of the cashier ladies freaked out and insisted she would not sell the repaired section, accusing me of goofing around and being careless with the merchandise. ...Everyone else was impressed. Logic and reason went right out the door, so during her lunch it went back on the shelf. Oh the drama...

Sergeant Thorne wrote:Afterwards one of the cashier ladies freaked out and insisted she would not sell the repaired section, accusing me of goofing around and being careless with the merchandise. ...Everyone else was impressed. Logic and reason went right out the door, so during her lunch it went back on the shelf. Oh the drama...

Well, technically, it's no longer "new", since you bent it and repaired it.

Have you had any experience with Apollo PEX manifolds?

The polybutylene pipe was actually a great product, you could run over it with a dump truck without it bursting, the problems were all caused by the fittings. I'd go PEX pipe all the way.

That's the same problem with several company's fittings for PEX. They fail by dezincification. I guess I don't want any fittings at all within any wall. Since I have a basement, access is not a problem underneath.

There are plastic barbed fittings for PEX. Also the shrink-fit style that Krom mentioned has plastic. Plastic is pretty big south of you in California, I believe, due to the complete absence of lead. Either of those options are what I would use, but there is a third. Watts plastic quick-connect fittings are warrantied for behind-the-wall use. The material is similar to CPVC. I don't remember right off-hand what it's called.

BTW, do any of these studies mention what percentage of the offending connectors is Zinc? I know there was a move about a year ago to federally mandate a lower lead content in brass fittings, and it went into effect earlier this year or end of last year (we've been seeing the new SKUs in the WATTS line)... if memory serves the result was an increased Zinc content, but don't quote me.

The ideal solution is the plastic pipe (poly/pex) but with the sharkbite quick release fittings, but I think that would be prohibitively too high.

Sergeant Thorne wrote:There are plastic barbed fittings for PEX. Also the shrink-fit style that Krom mentioned has plastic. Plastic is pretty big south of you in California, I believe, due to the complete absence of lead. Either of those options are what I would use, but there is a third. Watts plastic quick-connect fittings are warrantied for behind-the-wall use. The material is similar to CPVC. I don't remember right off-hand what it's called.

BTW, do any of these studies mention what percentage of the offending connectors is Zinc? I know there was a move about a year ago to federally mandate a lower lead content in brass fittings, and it went into effect earlier this year or end of last year (we've been seeing the new SKUs in the WATTS line)... if memory serves the result was an increased Zinc content, but don't quote me.

Let's see, it was Zurn and Kitec for dezincification of fittings and AQUAPLEX piping for the leaching of chemicals.

http://failures.wikispaces.com/PEX+Plumbing+Failures

Make up your mind yet TC?

Yeah. I think this winter when I get my irrigation system shut down, it's hooked up right near the main house line in the basement, I'll start rebuilding the system with PEX. I really like that home run manifold setup with the individual shutoff valves. I'll get the whole thing built, then start hooking things up at my leisure before I abandon and remove the copper mains. I'm hoping that PEX will be quieter in use and easier to run through joists too. I'm going to have to hook up to my old wall copper stubouts for the time being and hope those don't develop pinholes and leak on me. If that happens, I'll have to rip out drywall or cabinets, not something I want to do right now.

One question for Sergeant Thorne. If I install a pressure regulator on my system, do I have to put an expansion tank on the hot water side to relieve thermal pressure buildup?

tunnelcat wrote:One question for Sergeant Thorne. If I install a pressure regulator on my system, do I have to put an expansion tank on the hot water side to relieve thermal pressure buildup?

Depends on how much volume the system has when you are done. Being flexible PEX can give the system some room to expand and relieve excess pressure, but if the internal volume is too small and the pressure relief valve on the water heater starts dripping here or there then you would need to install an expansion tank.

The Wilkens pressure regulator I got supposedly has a thermal pressure bypass. I guess I'll see what happens after it's installed. I hope the pipes hold until winter when I can get to things. The one toilet is really stained with copper residue....from somewhere.

I like using brass compression fittings and heavy copper tubing. You just got to be careful rolling it out, so that you don't kink it, but no special tools, no welding, no plastic. Just place, cut, put the fitting on the pipe, put the pipe into its spot, and tighten it down. Never have a problem with the pipe again, (from what I've done)

tight corner? just elbow it, a bare bit of pipe tape on the threads and it'll never ever leak. All brass and copper. No muss, no fuss.