PEX Installation Methods

[Music] [Applause] [Music] hello everybody in this episode we're going to be talking about the three main types of running your potable water lines in your plumbing system at ruffin and the first one we're going to come to is this one up here this is called the trunk and branch system this is historically uh the way to do it plumbers have been doing it like this for years and years and years they did it with copper they did it with the old polybutylene they did it with cpvc and nowadays we use this stuff called pex which is the cross-linked polyethylene tubing this is pretty much the new stuff and the way everybody does it now this is the most cost effective we do use a lot of fittings here but basically what you're going to do is you're going to use a large pipe for your trunk line running down the plumbing center of your house not necessarily just the center but the plumbing center where all your bathrooms and your fixtures and stuff in a nice straight line we typically use three-quarter for this for your trunk in some of our larger houses or houses that have multiple bathrooms you might see one inch in some of your commercial applications it can get much much much larger depending on how many fixtures and how many bathrooms you're trying to feed but in a residential application this is what you're going to see a three-quarter trunk and then your branches are going to be done out of half inch now uh in this little simulation i have the red for my hot and i'm using the white pipe for cold in pex you could also get blue but we did away with the blue because it's just one more color if you notice on my hot lines here uh this last little stub out part is white we do that because we don't want to see a bunch of colors red and blue pipes poking out of a wall our stub outs we want them to be white it looks cleaner it looks much better but how this basically works is the large pipe is what is keeping your flow rate it's holding the volume of your water when you get to one of these fittings that steps it down to half inch you're going to choke that volume back and you're going to build pressure that's why we do that so you're building pressure to that particular fixture and as you see how this works i've got my branch lines coming off maybe this is a little powder bath with a hot and a cold uh and then a hot and cold and hot and cold maybe this is a master shower and then i've got this one here with no hot and why is that because some fixtures like a toilet only has coal uh it might be an ice maker or it could be a hose bit so that's the basics of how that works now some of the drawbacks to this it's a lot of fitness and the way pets works these fittings slip inside of these pipes so it's actually a choke point uh and the more fittings you have the more choke downs you're gonna have so that's kind of a drawback to it now pex is really good plumbing system uh not a whole lot of leaks and stuff and it's designed to last forever but in plumbing historically where you have your problems is it your fittings if there is to be a leak and that was popular with all of the plumbing systems uh cpvc copper all those those uh fittings are a possibility for a leak that's why when we do slab work and we put pecs underneath the slab we use the rolls we don't have any fittings in that stuff because we don't want something to break under a slab it's not likely to but the more fittings the more possibility the more choke points so it's a cost effective it's fast it's easy to run it's the most widely used system is the trunk and branch system which brings us to some of the other ones i've got here now this here is called a manifold system i do have a variety of pecs and i do have a variety of methods here this up here is actually what they call the pex b the b system it uses these crimp rings and there are some other methods you can use this setup here is pretty much designed to use with the pex a tubing a lot of different companies manufacture this stuff there's a lot of different names out there but most of them have both apex a and b and i have even seen some c out there uh but a the pex a you can do what's called cold expansion doesn't have these little crimp rings and stuff it uh actually expands pretty neat stuff uh this is more expensive the tubing is more expensive in the a versus the b but it does have a better warranty um and it is supposed to be a higher quality so you know you get what you pay for but this here is called a manifold system and as you see it comes back to a manifold and now this gives you better water distribution this goes into one centralized location and then each one of your water lines is going to branch off and go to its fixture when doing this system you can use that rolled hex not a whole lot of fittings on this stuff you can do it coming off a manifold and just twist in that pipe up because it will bend and curve without having the fittings now one of the advantages of this versus this guy let's say our water heater is over here and this is our hot line running down uh maybe we're down here uh in our shower our master shower uh this system you've got to charge this whole trunk with hot water before you get down to that last fitting at your master shower or wherever now say you're in that master shower and somebody comes over here and turns on a sink and say this powder bath or whatever this is represented uh your heater's here this point right here is gonna is gonna take that hot water first because it's first in line so it could affect the pressures and flow rate and some of the temperature uh on that last fixture especially if you start turning on other fixtures in front of them your manifold system is designed to eliminate that temperature and pressure uh different regulations there uh so this runs from that centralized manifold one pipe out to each one some of the advantages behind this is when concerned with hot water you don't have to charge this whole system up say you're only asking for hot water out of this guy it's only going to charge this pipe and that and it's going to leave the rest of these cold instead of heating up that whole pipe now this is a more expensive system it's a lot more complicated to use there's a lot more pipe but you don't have all these fitness you get rid of all those little fittings all those little choke points this is going to be a more balanced system and like i said you can use just a solid pipe you go to each fixture it's real balanced i really like this uh doing these manifold systems is a lot of fun to run which is going to bring us to our last one now this one here is the most expensive system out there because it's got a lot of neat little parts this is called a distribution block or a manifold block i really like this system because basically what this does is it gives you a breaker box just like you have your electricity well it gives you a breaker box for your house each one of these has a little shutoff valve here and it does come with a little key that's mounted right in the front so you don't lose it you can pop it off and pop it back in that hole but you can shut down these valves individually say you know later on 20 years from now you got a faucet that explodes or something in one of your bathrooms well if you don't have the time or the money to fix it right now you can take this little key and just go up and turn that faucet off and you still got water supply to the whole rest of the house and you can fix that thing whenever you get around to it it's really neat and the other thing is if say you live in a colder climate or you know it's going to drop down really cold one night you run your hose bibs off in here you can go up here and um shut your hose bibs down and of course go outside open those things up drain them down you don't have any water on those external points on your house nothing's gonna freeze and then when it warms back up of course you can just go and turn them back on it's a pretty neat thing um i really like these distribution blocks um i i'd like to see us run a lot more of them but it is a balanced system just like this you're not going to have those fluctuations in temperatures and pressure because it's basically just like this manifold system but it gives you the ability to shut these things down the other thing is cold water comes in here cold water goes straight through to here straight to your heater you can put your heater right above there uh and then it comes straight back down so and then it's balanced across everything here again this no fitness you don't have to use fists you can use fittings but you don't have to use fittings you're just going to swoop that stuff around and uh you don't have all those little choke points a really neat thing i would love to see this in the future but like i said this is the most expensive because it has the extra equipment um and as you can see this one did give me some different examples of the different types of fittings this one actually has a compression fitting which is kind of an old style thing uh as you tighten this down it squeezes that pipe and makes a good connection i've also got your crib style pets on here and then i have the press style pex here again the press style is one of the more expensive but i really like it because it's actually giving you more like a hydraulic fitting here versus just a single crimp ring it's actually got two little press points there it's really neat and then of course we had our cold expansion over here all of these systems can be used uh with your distribution block uh as in the connections and then you can also get these manifolds for the uh crimp style pex system as well uh but that's pretty much it on just your methods they all have their drawbacks uh and their uh you know their pros and cons this is the most cost effective this is the way plumbers have been doing it for years it's the branch branch and trunk system this works really good it's real simple easy to install this one comes somewhere in the middle because you have some extra uh fittings there and um a different style tubing which no choke points uh it's balanced it's it's nice and then of course the most expensive one you're gonna have out there is is this one but i really like this system because it does give you that breaker box to where you could shut your water down and work on a fixture while you keep water going to the rest of your house so that's that's pretty much it for this one thanks a lot guys [Applause] you

Channel: Plumbing Solutions, LLC

Views: 178,087

Rating: 4.8950968 out of 5

Keywords: pex install, pex install methods, branch and trunk, sub manifold, manifold, pex, type a, cold expansion, crimp, water line, plumbing, plumber training

Id: RuatTXBbJgc

Length: 12min 17sec (737 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 17 2020