How to Replace Polybutylene Piping with PEX | Ask This Old House

[Music] are you Deb I am hi Richard welcome to Richmond nice to be out I don't think I've ever been in the city before it's beautiful thank you I'm so glad you're here how long you've been here I built the house in 1991 and the reason I emailed you is because about a year ago in the winter my pipes froze and when the plumber came he went under the house and came out and said you have polybutylene pipes and I'm not going to touch them and you had no idea yet PV I did it I got your email I brought a sample of this this was the this was the pipe that was the craze in the mid 70s it was polybutylene it was flexible you could fish it anywhere the connections were easy to make but they found that over time the connections could fail and the pipe could actually fail and so by 1995 it was outlawed so what you built this in 91 so you were right at the end of the era of poly butylene and they used to do in a couple of different places in the country one was the Pacific Northwest and the other was right here the mid-atlantic so I'm sure a lot of your neighbors have this stuff too yes they do and once I learned what I have I talked to several neighbors and they've had their pipes replaced as well because they had some failures of the pipe inside the walls that they didn't know about and then some of them they had leaks that they actually saw that's the thing these fittings can be up inside the wall and just drip drip drip and seriously you wouldn't even notice it it's a really the only way now is to get rid of it so what we've done is we've actually found a local plumbing Kahn's gonna help us get that old pipe PBF excellent Travis should be here I hope yes he is come on in this house a beautiful insight to Deb I love it thank you Richard and there's our friend Travis how are you sir good how are you you got a little jump on us in here I did and you know this thing couldn't be any easier to replumb good we have an unfinished crawlspace here which allows us to access everything from underneath without doing minimal damage in here which is not the typical case where I've seen these jobs where you got a bathroom over here and a washing machine up here and you end up opening up walls and ceilings and it's really painful so take us through how you going to attack this thing okay well we're going to start over here in our kitchen we're going to access it through the bottom of the cabinet here hold-hold good we have our icemaker over here which will access up through here two down two down like I said most of our fixtures are on this floor great we have our laundry room here which we can act that's from our crawlspace nice nice and a first-floor bathroom here a full bath here folder that just comes up through the floors great but there's a bathroom above us yes sir there is so you can see oh here's the pee be right here so it doesn't actually look too bad as the better connections of the two that they had but so you'll be able to actually repipe this entire house with only open up just what we see right here yes sir that's pretty amazing let's get the water turned off I'm ready all right Richard here's our crawl space door crawl space we don't have a lot of those where I come from yes sir everything here in Richmond is typically a crawl space well let you go in yes sir what do we got okay what we have here is our polyethylene line that comes from the street and that's good news because that's the type of plastic we don't have to change so we don't have to dig up your front lawn right good our main shutoff which then transitions to the PB right all right so you ready to shut that off right now yes sir all right waters off I see an outside faucet here once you throw that in the bed over there okay water's coming on all right so we're gonna go open up the faucets inside break the vacuum okay Richard we're gonna begin tearing things out all righty all right so here is the poly butylene were taken out of the building flexible seams terrific and here's we're putting back in this is a PEX tubing cross-linked polyethylene PE X why would you take out one plastic pipe and replace it with another plastic pipe you know although they look similar they are not the same this is a tougher pipe and it's been proven in the world market since the 70s has been used for radiant floor heating first and for all those years it's put into concrete slabs and it gets heated and it gets cold and it really isn't a tough environment and it lasts and it's been safely used for 25 years in the United States for potable water you know when I mentioned metal to you right you know the difference between steel and tin you know steel is stronger with plastics we all lump them together and it's really there's a different chemistry inside of each one of these so the best way to test him is to take them back to really the way where they were when they were first manufactured this amorphous state so I've got a heat gun right here and this is made up of oil-based resins hydrogen and carbon that when we heat them up it start it'll start to soften it okay so now it's softened then I watch what happens when I pull it apart it has very little sidewall resistance and it just pulls apart like taffy okay yeah so that's a simple plastic this is the pecs and what's happened is those molecules that used to be just long strengths I now cross link much like a chain-link fence let's see how it's turned clear very clear so now unlike the simple plastic if I give extraordinary pull watch how much harder it is to pull this apart it's as if I've cut it with a knife all pipes are not created equal isn't that something it really is the pipe is only part of the story let me show you the fitting connection travis has run new pecks to replace the poly butylene from the crawlspace to the bathroom of the second floor and now he has to make some connections with fittings for those pecs sleeves are installed on the outside of the tubing this tool will expand the inside dimension of the tubing and the sleeve the expanded tubing allows the fitting to stick inside but only for a few seconds because the tubing and the sleeve have a memory and will return to their original dimension which makes a watertight connection [Applause] well this was a very good day another couple of hours you're gonna get the water back on right absolutely and Dev all you'll have is a few drywall repairs and a little bit of paint touch-up I can take care of that thank you you know this really was a great reminder for a lot of people you know many people like you have PB pipe in there they don't even know it until it either leaks or they go to sell the house and the home inspector tells them so but you're in good shape the next hundred 250 years all right thank you for coming to Richmond it was my pleasure he did all the good work thanks my friend thank you the job catch you later thanks for watching this whole house has got a video for just about every home-improvement project so be sure to check out the others and if you like we can see click on the subscribe button make sure that you get our newest videos writing your feet

Channel: This Old House

Views: 287,195

Rating: 4.9092875 out of 5

Keywords: This Old House, Ask This Old House, DIY, Home Improvement, DIY Ideas, Renovation, Renovation Ideas, How To Fix, How To Install, How To Build, Richard Trethewey, plumbing, pipes, polybutylene, PEX, 7-10 minutes, Polybutylene Piping, plumbing and heating, conventional PEX, PEX pipe cutter, PEX expansion tool [, licensed professional, plumbing supply houses, Piping with PEX, house plumbing system, polybutylene pipes, plumbing tricks pvc, modern house plumbing system, piping

Id: w9HZL82DzMc

Length: 7min 24sec (444 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 25 2019