When PEX goes horribly wrong

so you're installing pecs in your house and you need to know a couple of rules on how to do it properly either that or you have a plumber command and he's installing pecs this is in the case of this new construction house there are some very specific rules to follow with pecs and I'm gonna go over why these fittings had to be cut out and why the previous plumber did not do a proper job I was gonna leave the house open for leaks in the future so let's look at some of these fittings so the first rule that you need to understand is that pecs has an area that it can be crimped in when the copper ring goes around it it needs to be positioned within a certain range or else you're gonna have potential leaks in the future Peck's is very forgiving and so some plumbers get away with it but the manufacturer has specified on all pecks fittings where to crimp so looking at this fitting you can see where the barbs are okay that's over these two barbs is where ideally the fitting is gonna go most PEX manufacturers in fact all of them that I know say within 1/8 to 1/4 from the nub where the pipe slides up against this part right here it needs to be within 1/8 to 1/4 in order to get onto these two barbs that the crimp ring so let's look at some of these fittings and why they got cut out all right so you see right here put a tape measure up again so you see the end of the pipe we're not within that 1/8 distance away from that edge that means that we're really only catching on just if you were to look at it we're only catching on this very nub right there and this first or second however you want to look at it barb we're not getting on to that bar back here so anything that is going to be crimped too closely is not going to pass okay you can see over here same thing this is a 3/4 inch diameter and the barbs spacing is pretty much the same on all of these so whether it's 3/4 half-inch and you can see right there we're just gonna get onto one of the barbs we are not getting on to both of them because we're just crimped way too close to the end of the fitting you can see none of these are 1/8 over here not 1/8 this one is 1/8 you can see that one is actually crimped correctly this had to be cut out completely so that I could get to the other pipe at the other end but you can also see something else here notice these plastic fittings have little kind of guide plastic pieces this tubing should be pushed all the way up there and then it should be crimped as you can see it's crimped too close to the end of the fitting but the crimp ring is actually in the right spot as you can see right here these plastic guide pieces prevent the PEX ring from being pushed on too close as is in the case with this one over here they got this one right they got this one almost right this tubing just need to be pushed in more you have to meet the requirements for crimping now notice this guy over here not only is he past that quarter of an inch there he's pretty much right on the edge of it he's past that quarter inch you know where you can't crimp any more but also you see how it flares out he only crimped half of the crimp ring he didn't crimp all of it and I've noticed that on a lot of these this one too you see how he crimped part of it you know maybe 2/3 3/4 of the fitting is crimped but the rest of it is not crimped you have to be able to get a crimp ring completely primped all the way down there is something called a go/no-go gage and this thing right here tells you whether or not you made a proper get crimp so right here it says half-inch go and this is half-inch no-go so put this down on the first part of the ring we're good but if I put it down on the other part of the ring it won't go down because it's and crimped this thing will also tell you if you have a an oval if you've crimped it and for some reason have gotten an O oval so as you can see here this will not fit down onto that part because this part of the ring did not get crimped and you want a full crimp all the way across so yeah a lot of these also got twisted you see how this one come on camera focus you see how this one got twisted and it is not perfectly flat with the fitting what that means is that around the fitting right here it's gonna be making contact on the top and the right corner and contact in the bottom in the left corner but not full contact all the way around when you have a twisted crimp ring like that you're not making a good connection so you contact up here contact down here but right here and right there not good contact you want to make sure you have good contact all the way around I'm also gonna show you over here another one like that I mean if you look at that it's twisted it's bent I mean it's just a really bad crimp just not a good crimp it's in the right position but for whatever reason when they're crimping it got all twisted same for this and right here not necessarily in the best position because they didn't push the pipe all the way down and then it's all twisted and gnarled okay this one right here and look at it it's okay even though they didn't cut the ends of the pipe square it's still crimped okay and it's within the right specifications for distance and this yeah lots of this is just not not crimped correctly so we look over here you see that these two the top one and the left one are crimped well the one on the right is passable they don't push the pipe all the way on maybe as far as they could have but you're within the range of that 1/8 inch but then we come over here and look at this one and the problems are yes the one on the left is not cut cleanly and square to the pipe the one on the right well you can just see they don't have any kind of a gap and also it's not pushing pressure down on the barbs and then the half-inch coming off of the top you can see once again not pushed all the way onto the fitting and not cut very cleanly at a 90 degree angle these kinds of problems are kind of all throughout this house so I'm going through and I'm having to cut it out and replace it not a job you really want to do but a necessary one because once this gets drywall you don't want to in a couple of years or six months or however long it takes for expansion and contraction of these pipes for them to start leaking through your drywall or rotting out studs because that's really a you can pressure test this and more than likely because PEX is so forgiving these crimps would hold for the pressure test more than likely maybe one or two of them might leak but the majority of them would probably be fine even though they are not crimped correctly but we're talking about over time these pipes are gonna have hot water and the red ones you're gonna have hot water running through them and just from opening and closing valves you're gonna have movement but with heating and cooling with years of use you're gonna have expansion contraction expansion contraction there have been many jobs have been on where I've been called to go fix a problem that developed a leak most of the time with open oil actually because what will happen with open door fittings is unlike these where the copper ring is crimped down on to it open or it's an expansion fitting so the tool is put in and expands the pipe and then it slides over and just the pipe returning to its original shape clamps down on the pipe and what can happen with those they're they don't crimp down as tightly as these and if make too tight of a turn with the new preneur fitting you can eventually have leaks out of them that can be true with this but like I said this type of pegs is a lot more user-friendly as far as mistakes go but once again you do not want to be outside of those ranges that are specified you want to make sure that you're making a good crimp connection so let's look at something else they did and anybody that knows anything about plumbing will see the problem here I mean not only are these fittings not crimped in the right in the right position like none of them are but also you've got half-inch pecks going down for the tub spout that's not allowed it's got to be half-inch copper or something larger in diameter because when you have hot and cold meeting and flowing down into the tub if you have a half-inch PEX line which is a more narrow diameter than half-inch copper you could have the pressure building up inside the pipe it can't come out fast enough and so it'll start backing up going all the way up to your showerhead and then you'll have leaks coming out of your shower head which you know that's just one of those annoying things that really shouldn't be there not to mention it will also take longer potentially for your bathtub to fill up so it needs to be half-inch copper line going down or larger diameter yeah that's about all I've got for you so that you can just know the ins and outs of PEX hopefully this will keep you from having any kind of leaks for later on it's always a good idea even if you have a professional plumber like as in the case of this job coming through it's always a good idea to do due diligence and check things out yourself because that is not what you want alright guys have a great rest of your day

Channel: My Fortress Construction

Views: 339,116

Rating: 4.7879548 out of 5

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Id: 92x9z6uQbV4

Length: 10min 54sec (654 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 08 2019