Pex A vs Pex B - What's The Difference?

hi it's shannon here from houseimprovements.com and today i'm going to be talking about new pex plumbing pipes and their products but more to the point i want to talk about comparing pex a pipe like this to pex b pipe like this okay so most common pipe right now anyways that you're finding in the big box stores is the pex b and it's it's it's pretty rigid it doesn't have a lot of flex to it tech say not as common right now but more more in the specialty stores but it's starting to even show up in the big box stores but it's definitely a lot more flexible now i just i want to kind of go through the the pros and cons sort of of both and we'll insert a we'll insert a picture of this table i'm not sure maybe at the end or something or somewhere along the bottom i don't know you're gonna see a picture of this at some point um okay so the main things i want to talk about and i'll just go back to this it might be just as easy to reference it is i the things i want to talk about is the cost of materials the pipe restrictions because one of them is more restricted tool costs flexibility whether you can fix kinks or not and method of joint connection so first off cost-wise it's a bit of a toss-up when you're comparing same size pipe to same size pipe with the pex a you're going to find that the pipe is a little more costly than the pex b but the miscellaneous fittings you need are a little more costly for the pex b than they are the a so in the end i think pretty much that that cost when you directly compare the same sizes together pretty well as a wash in my mind anyways so a bit of a toss up there which is cheaper really uh pipe restriction now this is this is uh actually quite important so with the pex b first off let me show you this pex a and pex b pipe side by side doesn't really look like there's a difference really does it you get looking right in there i guess if i had some calipers i could actually measure that but i i think they're for all intents and purposes basically the same size where the restriction comes is that the fittings so if i take this is pex b this is small fitting here pecs a if i take those two fittings side by side and you look down there now can you see the difference you can definitely see pex b which is on my left your right is going to be restricted at every fitting that you add to it and that's to me one of the biggest drawbacks of pex b with that being said we can kind of go back a little bit to the cost comparison because there's a lot of professionals are suggesting if you're gonna plumb your house with pex pipe the normal is half inch we always had half inch copper right so the normal is half inch but with the pex b you might be better off to up size to three quarter inch so that you can get more flow because bees are very restrictive okay so so when you look at the cost now if you're you're comparing cost of uh pex a to cost sorry half inch pecs a to three quarter inch pecs b that's a whole different ball game now you definitely have a cost difference pex b being more if you've got to plumb your whole house and three quarter inch so it's just something to consider both these types of pipe have their own type of tool in order to make the connections because the connections are are different from a to b in a you're using a expansion and contraction type fitting so you're actually you've got your pipe and you're putting these rings on for every fitting for every joint and you're actually expanding this this connection and sliding it onto here and then the memory of the pex a shrinks back down it's always wanting to get tighter and tighter to get back to its original size and that's where your connection is is in that in that shrinking now here's three examples of the different tools you could use to expand this one you've got this is the the oldest unit i have i've been using actually pex a for quite a few years now this is the very first unit i had i bought it used i bought it second hand actually i think it was probably third hand by the time i owned it maybe fourth hand i don't know anyways what happens is as you squeeze the handle you can see how the head here expands and this is going to be inside of there so when you're starting out you would stick it in like that and start pumping okay and every time you pump it expands it and this will go in further and further and further until you're you're seated right in there about four or five pumps usually does the trick now the the problem with this tool is that when you're expanding this pipe they recommend that every time you stretch it you turn this tool a little bit so you don't get these marks lining up inside the tool which possibly could cause a leak so with this one you're manually pumping it plus you got to remember now i got to turn it an eighth of a turn or whatever every time okay this tool uh actually this tool was sent out to us and i i appreciate that so we thought it was worth showing we don't show a lot of tools people send us stuff all the time but i thought because this one is fairly innovative that i wanted to just talk about it a little bit so this one is the same thing you're pumping right you're pumping but this one the head is actually turning for you so if you've got that pipe sticking down and you've got this up in there and you're pumping you're not having to worry about twisting this thing too like you did with this with the old school one so this is a step forward from here because the hat itself is turning every time you pump it you don't have to worry about it okay so that's that one now uh there's also some battery operated expanders as well so this is even simpler because you simply stick it in there pull the trigger hold the trigger and it's expanding and turning and doing all its magic all at one time [Music] okay so just to give you an example how that works so i started in there like so and then you would stick your fitting in and within a few seconds it's ready for water pressure okay so that's pex a so you've got a few tool choices they're all basically doing the same thing because there's only one way to connect this and that's with this uh what do they call it i want to make sure i'm using the right terminology here contraction ring okay so good system i use it all the time hex b so you've got uh actually a few different ways it kind of goes together the same idea except with this one the fitting will fit in before you've expanded it that's kind of where some of the restriction comes in because this already has to be made smaller that fitting won't go in until i've stretched the pipe oop first we want to put one of our crimp rings on so the fitting can go in the pipe uh this is a crimp ring this one there's also these ones which is a pinch ring or a clinch ring whichever you want to call it so the the main difference here is you can put all these together and then you you do your connection what can happen with this system is sometimes guys going along getting things all together and because you can slide that ring up there and if you don't look close at it or bump it you might actually miss making a connection because you looked over oh yeah the ring's there i must have got that one where actually it's not there and turn on the water and it blows out so that's one drawback to this but anyways so you've got the uh this tool for this type of ring and it this one does three quarter inch and half inch this one basically compresses that ring so once i have that ring all on there i've got to get this opened up all the way and i get the ring within an eighth of an inch of the end of the pipe and the pipe's pushed on right to the shoulder of the fitting oop see it's moving all over the place get it on there squeeze it it's done now yeah i kind of botched that up actually this ring's actually probably twice as far from the shoulder as it should be because it slid on me so anyways that's one that's one system this one here is the clinch so basically this ring would be right in place of that one i'll just slip it on there i know this isn't going to hit the fitting or anything but basically this one is a little different it's kind of i can do it with one hand i'm not sure if i can oh yeah i guess i can same thing you'd want to get it close like i said i wanted that other one and what's going on here [Music] i don't use this system really as you can tell i won't go i guess i just wasn't pushing hard enough so then it'll bottom itself out once you've got it far enough on there now it's kind of past the connection but those are how the two work i actually kind of like how that that cinch uh ring went on there better than the crimp one but anyway so you've got i think there's actually one other style too that's a different tool yet but anyways you've got a couple different types of rings for the pex b that you can use which require their own separate tool depending which one you pick okay so that takes me back to where i was on that was to a cost so for pecs a you're looking at around 100 to 600 depending on which variety of the expander tool that you purchase uh for these other guys over here for for the pex b you're looking at about 60 bucks to 200 bucks so the tools normally this one's going to be cheaper for the tool you're going to you're definitely going to spend a few more dollars on a tool for the pex a now none of those tools really do anything else so they're strictly just for this purpose so there's nothing extra you can do with them to justify the extra cost okay so that's cost flexibility i talked about a little bit already i wonder if i can show the two side by side somehow now the pex b i can probably force further i can probably force the pecs b further than that but it's going to kink it's kind of hard to show you but you can see i i can get quite a bit tighter radius in the a then i which is this one than the b okay so flexibility is definitely a thing you can compare now fixing kinks with the pex b if you kink it there's no coming back from that the only thing you can do now is cut that out and put in a new chunk with fittings which again you're adding more restriction or replacing that whole piece with the pex a i've got a piece here that's damaged it gets kinked like that you can take a heat gun and fix that pipe because it has a memory and i've actually got a separate video on that so look for a link in the description or if you get lucky we'll throw a link up here somewhere so you can fix it a you can fix b you can't fix uh joint connection i just showed you that so that's uh the contraction one here and the pinch rings and stuff with this one so that's the main differences in in a from b they all cut with the same tool shouldn't use an olfa knife or any kind of knife you want to use this basically a pipe shear sort of thing to make nice clean straight cuts and either pipe either pipe will cut like that okay so those are the main uh differences now there is an exception of as of late um zern zern is the exception they produce a pex b which uses this technology so they have developed a pex b it's still pretty rigid it's not as flexible as a but it's not as rigid as b they've basically got one that's got a memory just like pex a just like this one here so that is an exception to the rule so be careful that you're looking when you're looking at pex b make sure you're looking at the right the rate type so a common brand around here anyways for the pecs b for this style would be uh bow and a common one for this one would be uh what are these guys called uponaro i don't know something like that you can tell we're not sponsored by them or i'd know their name off by heart right um so those are kind of two that i see the most common but like i said watch for that zern in the pex b because it is usable like this but it's the exception to the rule right now hopefully that was uh clearer than mud and you actually got something out of that like i said i'll throw this we'll throw this up here a little clip so that you can study what i've actually got written on there which is basically just the summary of what i just babbled on and on here about and you've probably heard enough of me talking smash the thumbs up subscribe to the channel and check out all our other videos

Channel: HouseImprovements

Views: 107,947

Keywords: diy, how to, home, house, improvements, pex, piping, plumbing, tubing, pipe, pex a, pex b, difference, cost, comparison, a vs b, crimp, expander, flexibility, tool, costs, tools, kink, flex, damage, install, installation, restriction, cinch

Id: krJrvuaozyc

Length: 15min 21sec (921 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 11 2022