Been looking into changing the pipes in the house ans was wondering what the difference is that I see in catalogs about 2 types of galvanzied pipe? In the old days there was only one galv pipe for cold water plumbing. Why now are there 2 different a lighter and a heavier pipe?
Can you tell me which might compare with the pipe of say 97 years ago? Are they making a hinner and a heavier version now so people can sell the option of better or worse and is there such a thing?
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If your remodeling and just want to replace, or upgrade, the plumbing I would strongly suggest that you not use any galvanized pipe. Use soft continuous rolled copper for supply and 3/4 copper inside the house. Galvanized pipe install involves a lot of labor intensive physical cutting and threading and, if your not familiar with it, can result in leaky installation. Galvanized pipe begins to rust immediately and will eventually need to be replaced sooner than copper (in most cases). If your water is acidic then pex or something similar would be a better choice instead of copper or galvanized.
Some water can be ionized from minerals in it from wells and be damaging to copper al;so.Unfortunately, I think this OP is in Chicago where they punish residents by disallowing the best choice of supply pipe he could use - PEX. I wonder if there is a plumbers union with political control over this
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chicago and the surrounding cities use the best construction practices of 1919.One suburb does not allow any SIPS or ICFS in addition to the plumbing and electrical restrictions..
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A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
In many states, the trade unions are intimately involved in building code adoption rules and regs...hence some archaic codes get put in all the time forcing, or at least making it difficult not to, employment of union trades people. Particularly true in Plumbing, electrical and HVAC area.
yeah, not just directly numbers hired, but force use of a material that takes more time to use, thus more hours for the union guys
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If you measure a piece of modern galvanized pipe you'll find that the inside diameter is larger than the stated dimension. Eg, a 1/2" pipe is maybe 5/8" inside. This is because galvanized pipe a hundred or so years ago was thicker (called, surprisingly "thick wall" vs "thin wall", or at least that was the case 40-odd years ago). The method of construction and method of galvanizing has also changed over the years -- the old stuff generally had a much thicker galv coating, and often there was a very visible seam in the pipe.
This change came about, I suspect, in the 20s or 30s.
But note that all of this pipe has the same external diameter and is threaded to the same IPS standard.
I've never seen any significant difference in more modern iron water pipe, aside from the to-be-expected differences from manufacturer to manufacturer. Of course, there's probably pipe coming from China now that looks like tinfoil, but thankfully I haven't had to deal with it.
I'm assuming you're aware that black iron pipe -- similar to galv pipe but not galvanized -- is used for gas pipe. You should never mix the two, both because they're made for different purposes and because you could seriously confuse the next guy to work on the plumbing.
And, of course, there's also rigid conduit, similar to iron pipe but thinner, shinier and capable of being bent (with a special hydraulic bender) in the field. This is to be used only for electricial stuff.