Installing PEX Water Lines: Replacing Polybutylene Piping

all right so this is what we have going on here we have two half inch poly b lines coming off the three quarter inch copper comes across here and droops beautifully gotta love that goes up through the floor into the kitchen cabinet this will feed the kitchen faucet the hotline will tee off to the dishwasher and what i want to do is cut all these lines out including these shut offs that go nowhere and cut it right back here so cut it here add a three quarter inch copper by three quarter inch pex adapter run along here in three quarter inch pecks to about this point where i'll add two take offs because i may add a outside hose bib at some point at this side of the house but there's also a drain down here that i may hook up at some point as well so i'll take you upstairs show you what's going on under the kitchen sink and then we'll go from there under the kitchen sink here i'm going to cut out these shutoffs replace them with quarter turn ball valves and then also the water supply line to the dishwasher as well so guys before we get started i just wanted to show you some of the do's and don'ts and best plumbing practices you never want to install a valve in this position where the stem or handle is facing straight down the reason being is that there is a seat up here where when the valve closes it closes against it and when it's in this orientation sediment and debris can land on that and then when you're going to close it it'll actually damage the seat and may never actually seal properly again so you want to install these valves either in the horizontal position or straight up like like those ones are there second is explaining this gray tubing up here as i referred to before it's poly b it's basically a water supply line just like pex but had a lot of issues with it so there was a bunch of class action lawsuits against the manufacturer of this tubing what would happen is it would get brittle it could crack and cause a ton of damage so you might ask yourself why would a plumber knowingly purchase a home with poly b in it and one the home was a really good deal and two all the poly b is exposed so it's easily replaced so this is one section we'll just be replacing today third is just a little tip here and if you have copper lines in your home and you're ever wondering which side is the hot and which side is the cold without having to run the water and going up and feeling each line is that okay this one here with the insulation on is going to be the hot but just looking at it the hotline is always going to be shinier than the cold line it's kind of an interesting little fact so i'm just gonna go shut off the water now cut this all out and we'll get going i'm starting with shutting off the main water supply to the home and relieving the pressure off the system by opening a faucet ah [Applause] so next is disconnecting the kitchen faucet supply lines and dishwasher line before working under the dishwasher make sure to shut off the power at the appropriate breaker i'm connecting the dishwasher with a 3 8 braided water supply you [Applause] so so i'm preparing the copper lines for the copper to pex adapters if you need a refresher on the best soldering practices feel free to watch my how to soldering video so all right guys before i get started soldering here i just want to talk safety the minimum i recommend are gloves and safety glasses especially if you're working above your head safety glasses are so important i'll give you a quick little story i was on a job trying to get it done quick and i was pretty much in the exact same scenario i had a bucket of water up here working above my head no safety glasses on and i was soldering away a piece of the solder drops into the bucket splatters and some of that solder landed right on my eyeball so i had to go to the er they ended up removing the solder luckily no permanent damage but the moral of the story is wear your damn safety glasses i'm also looking up here and this paper backing for the insulation looks extremely flammable so you're always looking around what is the flame actually going to be hitting am i going to cause a fire do i have a fire extinguisher close by so what i'm going to do is put a piece of tin up here just give it kind of a break or a heat heat barrier and then i'll do the solder joint so let's get started [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] all right before we get started let's just talk a little bit about pex 101 now there's a difference between poly b and pex fittings this is a poly b to pex adapter you can tell the difference is polyb will have three rings on the inside here one two three and pecks will have two one two so they aren't interchangeable and you wanna use the correct fitting for the correct piping the rings are all so different if the ring is copper colored it has to be labeled pex to be used on crimp pex if it is not labeled then it's actually a poly b ring this is a poly b ring right here no labeling and copper color now if you have a ring like this where it's black this is crimp pex it doesn't have to be labeled and it is actually copper it's just the coloring now to get a perfect connection the first step is having a nice clean straight cut so instead of squeezing down on your cutters which usually will cause the cut to be on an angle what you want to do is roll the cutters down by doing that you're going to get a nice straight clean cut next is installing the ring you usually want about an eighth of an inch of tubing past the ring and then you insert your fitting as far in as possible the reason you want that eighth of an inch is the ring will then crimp on the two ridges so get your crimpers ready here you want the the jaws as straight as possible squeeze just down just once release the crimpers and then inspect the ring make sure it's nice and straight and that's crimped properly now most crimpers are going to come with a gauge like this it's called a go no go so this is your for your 3 8 half inch and three quarters is three a half inch here so what these want to do is you want it the ring to pass on the go and not pass on the no go so we slide the go over slides over perfectly go over the no-go it won't slide over so this is a correct crimp joint it's not over crimped and if it was it would go over the no-go and it was under-crimped it would not go on the go so if you find you're not getting enough compression on the rings and it's not passing the go no-go gauge then you can actually adjust the level compression on your crimpers so this line here from factory is going to aim at zero so this one's never been adjusted and as your jaws wear you can increase the compression so the higher the number the more the ring is compressed so your next adjustment is is one and then goes two three four five and the way that works is this c-clip pops out this pin will lift up you spin it to one or the next level reinsert the pin and install the c-clip and then re-crimp a joint test with your no-go gauge and if you need to increase the pressure compression even more you can and just go from there so i just crimped a few joints here that wouldn't pass inspection and what to look out for when you're crimping pecs the first being is there's way too big of a gap here where the crimp ring is actually compressed and you're only catching the end of the fitting and is not a solid connection this one here has no gap it will probably seal but is not a strong connection because you're not catching the two ridges here in the fitting this one here is an example of cutting the tubing on an angle and the fitting is now not fully inserted into the tubing so also a poor connection this one here can be a little bit harder to catch but it's when the jaws of the crimper are on an angle when you're compressing the ring so as you look as i spin it here the ring is deformed and this is not a strong connection and you would want to cut it out and replace it and this is the scenario you'll probably run into the most is when the fitting actually pulls away from the tubing when you crimp the joint and you want to avoid this as well so [Music] [Music] [Music] i'm just pre-building my future takeoffs as it's always easier to crimp at table height [Music] so next i'm installing quarter turn ball valves for the hot and cold faucet supply and the hot dishwasher supply [Applause] [Music] open the main water supply partially so that the system fails slowly keep the faucet open until there's no air present then close the faucet and open the main water supply fully check for leaks and all your connections [Music] foreign well guys thanks for watching and like always if this video helped you out liking commenting subscribing is always greatly appreciated till next time you

Channel: Pros DIY

Views: 104,359

Keywords: How to install PEX, How to connect PEX, Connecting PEX water lines, Installing PEX water lines, Replacing Polybutylene piping, Replacing Polybutylene tubing, Replacing Polybutylene water lines, Polybutylene, Poly-B, Poly B, PolyB, PEX, water lines, waterlines, crimping, crimp PEX, shutoff valves

Id: CR2x7ZQvA-A

Length: 18min 36sec (1116 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 17 2020