Pex home water piping

A question to any plumbers here on the forum...

I live in an old (~100 yr.) farm house that I am restoring with my wife into our dream house. I am very interested in redoing the plumbing with pex tubing instead of the traditional copper. So far I haven't found anything saying they are garbage, but wanted to ask here.

I heard that the technology previously had problems with connections breaking loose and causing water to spray everywhere in your walls, but that problem has (apparently) been fixed.

I would be interested in any of your thoughts. Or maybe good suppliers if you know of any.

Thanks

Have PEX running all through my house. No problems here.

I remodeled our old one car garage into a guest cottage and the plumber I hired used pex throughout. No issues. Apparently it is also somewhat more resistant to freeze bursting, but I'm no expert. That's just what he told me.

Many builders here have switched over to PEX for obvious reasons. Get it before the prices go up as a result of increased demand.

BK:

PM Sent.

No idea, but first step would be to see if it's allowed by code.

My brother is a plumber and it's all his company will use in new construction (they don't do service or renovation).

I plumbed my whole house with it. The previous plumbing was CPVC. Yuck. I can tell you especially in an old home, that PEX is a HUGE time saver because you can snake it very well and the bend radius isn't too bad. The crimping tool is around $125 clams and you need one for each size PEX. A PEX connection is leak free if you do it right. Plus you don't have joint corrosion issues/or the dielectric effect which is nice. The manifold is a little pricey, but the big advantage is you can isolate appliances so that if something goes on the fritz it doesn't disrupt your whole house service. I really like it.

I wanna see pics of your farmhouse renovation. I'm in one myself!

Great stuff! My new garage was built with PEX and I've added to it. The connectors are a bit pricey, but you don't need as many because it comes in long rolls.

I was reading about it on some websites...pretty interesting material.

Has anyone used it in brewing yet?

Ha! Good point, it would be really cool with the color coded lines.

This has been some really good advice! Thanks so much, and keep it coming. If anyone has had problems, I would like to hear about those as well.

Revvy said:

I was reading about it on some websites...pretty interesting material.

Has anyone used it in brewing yet?

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Well, in a sense I have . It supplies my water so, kind of. This stuff is so much easier to work with than copper. (Try sweating a joint in 100 °F weather in a crawlspace that is full of old insulation, spiders and dust, where you can't even sit up and have to lay on your back.....I'll take the PEX ). One other nice thing is that it is less lossy (thermally) than Copper. Nothing wrong with good ole' Copper...but the price is ridiculous now, and it is much harder to work with.

Did I mention that once you crimp it, you are leak free (barring severe freezing with water in the lines...which would be the same thing with Copper anyhow)?

Boerderij Kabouter said:

Ha! Good point, it would be really cool with the color coded lines.

This has been some really good advice! Thanks so much, and keep it coming. If anyone has had problems, I would like to hear about those as well.

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About the only problem I encountered is, if you get into a tight corner it can be hard to open the crimper up fully...so sometimes you have to be creative.

Looking more into this stuff... It looks like crimp fittings are the way to go, and that Ebay is the best supplier by far. This can be done pretty cheaply too! I am excited!

If it's good enough for This Old House, then must be pretty great stuff. Richard Trethewey praises it constantly on the show.