I’m going to be replacing all the plumbing in my house in the near future and was wondering about pex tubing. I’m concerned about the leaching of chemicals into the water. I’ve read plenty about how it is safe, but those articles seem to come from people who’d like to sell you the product. What’s it going to be like in 20 years? In a previous house I did the same job with copper, so I’m confident in my abilities to sweat pipes together. Pex would speed the job up and be easier in the very limited crawl space that I have to work in.
Thanks for any help/opinions,
Andy
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Oh man, go with pex.
"Preach the Gospel at all times; if necessary, use words." - St. Francis of Assisi
You might want to try an advanced search. Pex has been debated to death here in the past few months.
Do the search thing and you too will convert to PEX.
It's the only way to fly.
If we need to worry about polyethelene in contact with water, then we've got far more to worry about.
PEX stands for cross-linked polyethelene, as you no doubt already know since you've done some research into this. (The "cross-linking" part means that the polymers that make up the material have been webbed together to give it radial as well as longitudinal strength.) What this means is that many, if not most, of the liquid food products that we all consume daily are packaged in polyethelene Many of these food products are acidic, or in other ways are more aggressive than water, so the probability of leaching anything harmful from the poly is greater.
Not saying that there's no possibility of harmful chemical leaching from PEX piping that nobody knows about yet; just saying it's pretty far down on the list.
Performance-wise and installation-wise, there's no question whatsoever: go with PEX.
Thanks for the replies, I will do a search and read some more, but it looks like pex will be it. I am looking at adding solar to the system and the new unit mentioned in the latest FHB mag uses pex, so it seem to be the way to go for the whole system.
My house was re-plumbed with an earlier version of PEX several years ago. The system is probably 20 years old, or more. I have no problems with it. European countries have used PEX for much longer. Most of the early failures that were reported in the U.S. were installation error.
Now you are into another whole can of worms: which system of joining the pex to use.
solder
Nail guns and other tools have made it into recent horror movies I am too afraid to watch. How long before crimp rings?
If we don't move away from the old dark clouds, how the hell do you think we will move ahead?
Pex is the balls.
Ok, I did the advanced search, holy cow, lots out there. I'm going to keep reading, but I'm still not convinced it's totally safe. I like all of the other benefits of the pex. It's a small house, I'm comfortable with working with copper and I'm doing the work so labor is cheap. If the s**t hits the fan, I can always rip out the copper and trade it for food!
Thanks for the help,
Andy
Yeah, I was feeling the same way.
Then you do your research and give it a try. That's when you realize copper is done.
Yep, copper is for making manifolds and repair work from now on.
Just tested my first pex plumbing job today on an upstairs apt. reno. in an old vickey.
Old coil copper ran up from basement thru a beam, between studs and around corners going all over.
Pulling the pex thru being taped to the old copper was the cat's meow and not a wet weep anywhere in all the connections.
Whoever just said pex is the balls has it right.
Who drinks city water anymore anyhow.
The way things were going around here for a while you'd be lucky if it was only you trying to tear out your copper. Seems to have died down a bit with the decrease in metal prices lately.
Testing of water and food has come a long way. If it has been tested by independent labs I'm confident it is safe.
They have test now that can detect VERY small amounts of contaminants.