Copper vs Pex vs SharkBite - Freeze Testing

on the build show today we're talking plumbing systems I've got all the major plumbing systems that I've ever used in the 25 years that I've been a builder and we're gonna fill these with water and see if any of these systems are more or less prone to damage with freezing pipes [Music] I've been a builder for over 20 years and I've used all these different plumbing systems on the build show today we're gonna fill these all with water and test the theory that I've heard the theory goes that a copper pipe exposed to the cold outside will split in freezing weather whereas apex pipe will actually expand without breaking is this really true we're gonna test and find out so first of all if you're watching this in the north you're probably snickering right now you can't imagine putting a water line all the way to the outside of the house and that thing not freezing you've either got if you're building new constructions something like this product this is awkward hydrant this is what they call a frost free hose bibbs so now the shutoff is actually way inside the wall cavity or you've got one of these but you've got an inside shut-off somewhere in the house maybe in the basement there's a knob you're gonna turn and you're gonna drain out the the water in the line with an air release valve and then that hose Bibb going to the outside is just filled with air and the winter months however in the south I've been remodeling and building here for over a dozen years it's really typical even on new construction to see this a copper pipe going all the way to the outside and then you're gonna cover this with some type of frost covering maybe a plastic or a foam gasket that's going to keep it insulated during the cold weather which we typically only get for a few days at a time so here's what we're gonna do with this test I've got 1/2 inch and 3/4 pipes and all the major styles copper C PVC and two different types of packs and we're gonna fill these the top of the water now I chose a hose bib for two reasons number one I'm curious to see how it does because of course we see this a lot but also I couldn't cap both ends of the copper you know when we sweat on a fitting the copper pipe needs to be empty in order in order to sweat on that fitting so what we did on the top here is we sweated on a male fitting and then we've got a female hose bib that comes on that way I can fill this with colored water all the way to the top of the fitting then we can close off that gate valve and I'll know that this water is filling all the way the length of this 16 inch pipe I'm also curious to see whether a sweat on fitting will do any different than this fitting this is sharkbite fittings which i've talked about in the previous video obviously a hot topic so each one of these styles I did with both a standard fitting and a sharkbite for instance see PVC this is a a solvent fitting where you're actually gluing that fitting on and again we put a sharkbite on they're both 1/2 inch and 3/4 I'm curious to see with the extra of volume and a 3/4 inch pipe if they're that extra volume leads to more expansion of that water when it freezes I'm also curious to see what the difference is between these two styles of pecs this is a vegan X which is pecs B and I've also got the same 1/2 inch in 3/4 in open or packs now open our pecs is pecs a a little more flexible I wonder if that makes a difference for us and the fittings also work a little differently on this pecs a we've got an expanding fitting I talked about this in a previous video so I wonder if that means that pecs a with that expansion fitting is gonna take a freeze better so let's fill all these with that water and we're gonna put them in a freezer overnight now I've got a battery in here in my big Larry flashlight that I'm hoping it's gonna last with some lithium batteries I've also got my GoPro with my extended battery pack we're gonna do a time-lapse video so hopefully we can actually see these but let's pick this video up tomorrow after these pipes have had a chance to be in the freezer for 24 hours and let's see what happens art it's been overnight since we put these in the freezer exactly 20 hours ago we drop these in there we had a GoPro going overnight so we can check that GoPro footage the man look at this right away we can see that the copper lines have some crazy failures look at this 3/4 inch that green tinted water blowing out of that split right there we can also see that the sharkbite connects around the half-inch copper man it absolutely blew that thing off the top I don't see any damage immediately to the pecs or the CPVC but I am seeing some green tinted water on the freezer on the bottom there's even some on the side up here how did that happen maybe when this copper spit blue water all the way up to the top I'm not sure but let's go check the go footage and then we'll thaw these out and have a look alright so here's the GoPro footage that was inside the freezer overnight let's see what is going on here now we've only got a 21 second we took a picture every 10 seconds and it made it into a movie so here we are about halfway it looks like all the pipes are about the same I don't see a lot of movement yet let's see what we got here oh I'm seeing a pipe move let's see two more seconds oh and we got a split ah yes it worked let's rewind I want you to I want you to focus on a couple things so as I press play look at this pipe right here first of all watch this guy see what happens back here I'm just put my mouse right there look at that thing just grow that sharkbite connector on the half-inch copper it's just being absolutely pushed out and I think this three-quarter inch copper is also doing the same let's see if we can watch the last couple seconds of this - it's growing as well not quite as fast as the half-inch that's interesting I thought it would have been the three-quarter inch pipes that had and then this is 3/4 copper and this split happens in a split second so it must have happened in a burst and also watch how the pipe jumps so look right here when I press play this is this is pretty awesome boom I think split open the pipe goes looks to me like the pecs pipes didn't move a whole lot let's switch this now back to the I'm gonna pull these out of the freezer and let's go back to the desk and see what we can see all right so the GoPro footage from inside the freezer that was pretty cool the next test I did here was I rolled out some paper towels on the desk here and I brought the pipes directly from the freezer so they could thaw on top of the paper towels remember I filled these pipes with some green tinted water before they froze and my thought was when they thaw maybe we'd be able to see where some of the leaks are now certainly the paper towels are most green over here on the copper side of things but initially enough there's a little bit of a stain on nearly or really every single one of these up by the faucet Oh in a minute but first let's review each one of these pipes and what happened to him so first half-inch copper so half-inch copper with a sweat on fitting boy this one failed pretty dramatically look at that big bulge and a giant split in this one think about if this is in your basement and the water pressure was on oh man you'd have a ton of water spilling under the house pretty dramatic failure that's happened I'm sure a million times across America over the years the other one that was interesting is the sharp bite connector and the half-inch copper this one pushed out the copper the sharkbite connector was able to grab onto the pipe but the entire fitting was blown off Wow that was dramatic next when we go up to three-quarter inch similarly this one had a pretty good sized split up here with the sweat on fittings and again the sharkbite connector blew off now this time it blew off the connector is intact it looks like you could reuse this connector if you take a close-up look here at the fitting it looks like the stainless teeth on the sharp bite connector actually dug into the copper but weren't able to hold back the pressure and like nails on a chalkboard it actually blew off the back very interesting result okay and running over to the CPVC now these look like they actually stayed intact both the solvent fittings with an end cap and the sharkbite look like they're in real good shape we do have a little bit of staining by the faucet but actually every one of them had that I think it's probably an inherent flaw on my test by putting a hose bibbs on here because I believe this teflon tape in the hose bib maybe I didn't quite get these tight enough I don't see any splits or cracks on here I think maybe we just had a couple of drops couple drips that maybe froze and we're coming out from that from that connection the other interesting thing about that is it would actually leak outside of the house if you really had a hose bib on so you wouldn't see the dramatic damage so see PVC generally speaking did pretty well now I pulled the sharkbite cap off the CPVC as well in same thing look how this thing dug in now this cap was not blown off I had to take this off with the three-quarter inch sharkbite removal tool and this one we don't have the nails on chalkboard this one dug in as if it dug its heels in and it stayed on it was able to resist that pressure I'm assuming because there's stainless teeth were able to get enough bite onto the CPVC this one stayed on look great okay going over to the pecs now we've got open or or pardon me I've got viga pecs which is pecs B first this is probably the plumbing system I've used the most over the last 15 years or so it's a crampons style fitting this one looks fine I don't see any problems with that I've got all the water still in that one similarly with the sharkbite in there I can actually see an air bubble in there all the water's still in there just a little bit of drip edge up here but seems like it did fine same thing with a three-quarter and then I pulled this one off again with the remover tool the water didn't do this I did and again the sharkbite teeth dug right in it was able to grip tight and the three quarters both did fine I didn't see any splits last up is pecs a this is open or pecs and similar to the other pecs this one seems like it did just fine I don't see any problems here I pulled off the sharp bike connector here manually again with the removal tool same thing it dug right in it did not move this one looks like it's in great shape and if you look at this three quarter pipe it bent a little bit it looks like by just the water pressure in there but man those fittings that is an impressive fitting I don't know if you saw my other video I made on this but basically the the way that these end caps go on is the pipe expands you put the fitting in and the pipe contracts around that I think that ability to expand is really gonna make pecs and particularly this pecs a a good choice if you've got some freeze-thaw issues what are the takeaways from this you know why don't we do this of course it's interesting but I think the takeaways on this are if you've got a second home a vacation home a rental property a mountain cabin something that you know certainly you could maybe drain down the water but what if there was still water in the pipes what if someone left the house suddenly on a rental and it was freezing weather you know I think if you had pecs in the house you can survive that pretty well I'm not saying that the whole house would make it but just in these little 16 inch pipes we had no problems very impressive copper on the other hand you better put a frost free hose bib on or a spot where you can shut off the water to the outside and then drain down the pipe because just in this little short 16 inch seconds we saw massive failures in the copper does not mean the copper is a bad system copper is amazing a very high end a great water delivery system but not a lot of options for freezing copper without a big failure happening guys I hope you found this as interesting as I did off of this test was really really fun if you're new to my channel we publish every Tuesday and every Friday I'd love you hit have you hit that subscribe button below or chasing down a hunt throughout a hundred thousand subscribers here on the build show so I'd love to have you be among those few that hit that subscribe button right before we hit a hundred and Merry Christmas to all my followers who've been following me guys it's been a great year I'm so thankful for your followership and for watching these videos they're fun to make and I appreciate those comments that you guys make below hit that subscribe button follow us on Twitter Instagram otherwise we'll see you next time on the build show [Music]

Channel: Matt Risinger

Views: 1,261,919

Rating: 4.9122553 out of 5

Keywords: copper piping, freeze test piping, sharkbite test, sharkbite videos, plumbing videos, build show with matt risinger, pex piping, pex vs copper piping, plumbing pipes, which piping should i use, whats the best piping to use, cold weather piping, will ice expand piping

Id: OOeBJ8mDr8Q

Length: 13min 0sec (780 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 15 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/SeattleJeremy]

Found this and it looks like a really interesting test. Thought you'all might like it.

[u/dmatt32]

I enjoy this guy. Very informative. Seems very very educated in the trades.

[u/[deleted]]

He didn't pressurize the pipe. He should have put a hose to hose adapter on and filled from a pressurized line. Maybe to simulate reality.

[u/woke1]

tldr?