What To Know About Is PEX vs Polybutylene Plumbing Leaks Bad Pipe and Fittings Read Below

hello i'm chuck phillip with south alabama home inspections and welcome to another edition of southern home talk what we're looking at is two different plumbing products that are connected together on the left you're looking at great polybutylene pipe that pretty much started getting used in our area around 1985 and was used all the way up to the mid 90s on the right we're looking at pecs and that started really getting used here in the early 2000s um you find it in blue red and white there's also a b and c i'm not going to get into all of that and it's also pretty much being used all the way until this current day has been the fact that's probably the primary product that's being used in most new construction the one on the left the polybutylene um it got discontinued because of reported failures from chlorinated water coming through the piping and causing it to deteriorate from the inside out so if you have polybutylene in your house you probably should get it replaced but another thing too if you're planning on buying a house and it has that product in there it's a possibility you could have some problems getting some insurance so just know that there's issues with that but there's also been some issues with pop with pecks uh in fact in the mid 2000s there was some reported defective pecks that was installed in some houses as well but they pretty much connect the same way now what you're looking at is a barb fitting there and they make those fittings out of plastic i don't recommend using them and they make these rings these crimp rings they're either made of brass or copper and this is the crimp tool that's used to make that connection this is a combination half three-quarter tool and so if this isn't properly crimped then this can create a failure at the fitting and so sometimes that's where you find the problems in this type of plumbing is in the connections but another thing that can happen as well is if you have this in the walls or in the attic which is where a lot of it is anytime you turn the water on and off if it's not properly strapped it'll start moving like that and it'll eventually rub a hole in the pipe itself you know causing a leak and so that's why it's important that this pipe be properly strapped to keep that motion out of it and sometimes i find these straps missing in the observable areas i'm able to inspect but another important issue as well is that if you have a tanked water heater and you don't have an expansion tank on it and that's a little tank you may have noticed on top of your water heater if you do have one but if you don't have that there you should get one installed because you have a thermal expansion that takes place in your water heater and this can put an enormous amount of pressure on your plumbing system and even cause your water heater to fail and some people may say well i've never had to have one before well a lot of the municipalities have now installed check valves at the street and so where before if you had excessive pressure that pressure could bleed back to the city side of the water meter well that check valve's preventing that now so the only place that pressure can go is on your plumbing system and so if you don't have that tank you should have one installed but if you do have that tank there it should also be inspected because i'm finding that these expansion tanks only last in the maybe three to five years and so if it's not working it's just as good as not having one there at all now another thing about pecs as well is that this cannot be exposed to any kind of sunlight not even ambient sunlight because it will fail dramatically and very quickly it just can't take that so you should take pipe insulation to protect it from the sunlight so anyway i hope this has been somewhat informative to you i'm chuck phillip with south alabama home inspections and thanks for watching

Channel: Southern Stories

Views: 37,859

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Id: jlvg-25N6Zw

Length: 4min 28sec (268 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 19 2020