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 PEX POSTING We just closed on a house last week: 1 1/2 story 3BR/1BA ~1,500 sq ft. A minor fixer upper with a lot of potential but the pipes were all old galvanized, probably from 1946, and were impeding the water pressure. On the advice of our inspector, we went with PEX and, again on his advice, we did everything ourselves—which means, I did as my "amateur contractor" father told me. I was hoping someone with more knowledge than me or my father could take a look at these photos and let me know if we did something horribly wrong. My pops is the "LET'S TRY THIS!" kind of DIYer and sometimes gets ahead of himself. It was a pretty simple job on paper: just one bath, all plumbing on the first floor. Of course, getting all the old galvanized out was a bitch, even with the Sawzall, and, as it turned out, all the pipes in the bathroom were tiled over inside the wall, so we had to keep and use the old galvanized bath hookups in the basement. I imagine that these short runs of galvanized are probably slightly to moderately impeded but we'll probably eventually just go through the floor for the bathroom sink and toilet. I don't know what we'll do about the shower. After we hooked everything up, we turned on the water and there were no leaks... except for a small drip from the 30 year old heavy duty ball valve my dad brought for the main shutoff (as seen in the first picture, on the other side of the meter). There were no leaks at all in the PEX but there did seem to be a lot of crap in the lines knocked loose from all the banging, Sawzall-ing etc. So now the water is turned off before the meter and we're just waiting to get another, not-30 year old ball valve to use as a main shutoff and we should be good to go. Thanks for looking, and if anyone is interested in my PEX IMPRESSIONS, let me know and I'll write something up. (click for big ones)      One of only two runs where there might be a problem. This is a long run, resting on top of the duct work/furnace. I didn't do this run and I see now that it is touching an exhaust-looking thing coming out of the top of the furnace. I don't know if it is actually the exhaust. I need to go back and check.   The question mark about the bathroom sink is because there are three hookups for four fixtures. The shower and the toilet are pretty obvious and the bathroom sink is getting its cold water from one of them. We just haven't had the water turned on long enough to play with the shutoffs and figure out which it is.    The other run I have any real concerns about. The hot water from the heater is running over that gas pipe and over. There's not a huge amount of stress there but it's a little weird and it was the only good way to get to that joist to get a solid support for the shutoff. 2nd view of the above.      (Sorry for the image dump.) el_caballo fucked around with this message at 07:46 on Sep 1, 2009 |
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Sep 1, 2009 07:40
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Rd Rash 1000cc posted:It looks like you did a decent job to support it. It should be supported every 32 inches vertical and horizontal. Thanks for looking. There is one length where it's well over 32" and needs an easy to nail in support but, after that and the laundry sink, everything should be solid... except for those outdoor faucets. I need to really screw those down (they weren't before) and also come up with some way of locking them down in the basement as well. Anyway, even though no one asked, I figured I'd give back to the thread and write about how I lost my PEX virginity. PEX POSTIN' (This is coming from someone with no previous plumbing experience and has only spent one weekend working with the stuff) So PEX is some kind of goddamn space plastic as you can see in these two YouTubes: Part 1, Part 2. It can basically bend 90 deg. without using a fitting but it's still a pretty wide turn and, depending on the size of the PEX, you might need need a heatgun/hair dryer and a plastic elbow frame to hold the shape and nail it down. I believe we got 100' of 3/4" for around $35 and a couple 25' rolls of 1/2" for around $6 each. You get the brass fittings for about $1-3 apiece, depending on how complex they are. The real expense is the crimping tool: $100. Again, I'm talking out of my rear end here but I believe the tool is one of the most important parts of the whole system. I wouldn't skimp on it. We got one that looked like a bolt cutter. The way it works, for those not familiar: You cut the PEX as straight and as clean as possible. You could use a hacksaw (maybe) or even a utility knife but it's worth buying one of those clamp-style PVC pipe cutters. We got a $10, simple pliers-style cutter that had a razor sharp blade that squeezed down on a perpendicular pipe channel. It wasn't specifically made for PEX but worked perfectly. It also helps to have a second person straightening out the PEX with both hands while you cut in the middle. Unless you're really careful, it's hard to get a perfect straight cut when it's trying to bend back to the coil shape. Anyway, with your clean cut PEX, you put the brass fitting with its flanges inside the pipe, as far as it will go. Then you take a copper ring and put it about 1/4" to 1/8" from the fitting and then crimp it down, always with the tool at 90 deg. to the pipe. Then you check the crimp with the "go/no-go" checker: a flat piece of steel with really accurate notches cut out of it. If the "go" notch fits over the ring and the "no-go" notch does not, then the crimp is good and you can keep on going. Note about fittings and rings: Supposedly there was a big recall on Zurn fittings and maybe rings. I've read various reasons for the recall: 1) They cheaped out on the brass in the fittings and, in certain areas with hard (I think) water, it reacted with the brass and leached out zinc (or something), which clogged the line. 2) the flanges on the fittings weren't high enough for the rings to grip (although you'd think the go/no-go checker would catch this). Or 3) the copper rings themselves had some sort of problem. A lot of people out there are confused as to what the problem is and I'm just repeating their BS. (BTW: I believe my tool/fittings/rings were basically all Sioux Chief brand and seemed solid.) So one of the big reasons to do PEX is to do the monoblock thing, where you basically have a circuit breaker box on your wall for your water. Cold and hot water comes in, goes to the monoblock and then branches out from the outputs, which each have their own shutoff valve. Since our place is so small and simple, we just used the PEX like copper and followed the old galvanized runs almost exactly. Once you get the old pipes out (or you just leave them in), the PEX goes up really fast. Almost too fast. The thing to keep in mind is that the copper ring crimper needs to be opened completely to crimp the rings and it needs to be at a 90 deg. angle. If you're putting up a fixture or run that needs to be crimped horizontally, then you'd better have enough room between the joists to open the tool and get it in there OR you have to make sure you crimp the horizontal ring first before you crimp the rest. This is probably obvious to everyone else but, for me and since we were moving so fast, we did have one that we almost had to do over because it was between the joists. Luckily, we were able to flex it down to come at it from an angle otherwise we would have had to use... The Decrimping Tool which is basically just a clipper where only one side cuts and the other side is a rounded post. So you cut the PEX near where you made your bad crimp and bring the fitting down and then cut the ring off by putting the post inside the fitting and the blade on the ring. It cuts through the ring and into the PEX but not far enough to hit the fitting. What else... It needs to be supported every 32" and it shrinks something like 1" per every 10. deg for every 100'(ft) of tubing. We didn't do any vertical runs really, but there's some rules for those too. You can't use it outside. It's supposed to be really forgiving about freezing and thawing but UV rays will degrade the plastic. Oh and, after looking around on the internet, plumbers apparently loving hate PEX, partly because of that fiasco with the other space age plastic pipe in the 80s where it all eventually failed and probably more likely because any idiot can run fresh water PEX through their house. Although, I'll bet drains are a different story. I guess the only other thing is: Don't let your trigger happy father take the Sawzall to all the old pipes until you're sure you can run PEX straight to all the fixtures. My dad made a cut really close to a galvanized elbow joint that we could have saved by easily twisting the straight horizontal old pipe out of it. Then we went back upstairs for the first time in 10 hours and realized that we'd have to bust tile to get PEX all the way to the bathroom fixtures.  Instead, I had to wrench for about two hours with about 15 deg. of clearance between the joists to get the stubby elbow joint off and then run the PEX into the vertical galvanized pipe. Let me know if you would like to go on about the virtues of the wonderful new product PEX and how it's changing the world we live and plumb in.
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Sep 1, 2009 21:36
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Rd Rash 1000cc posted:Its good to see someone so zealous about pex. But vanguard pex which you used has some draw backs. (vangurad is one maker of the crimp pex so i just refer to it as vanguard pex.) The stuff we used was Nibco Dura-Pex. All the stuff on PEX in general that I've read is that it's more resistant to freezing than copper pipe and, I would assume, lovely corroded galvanized as well. I don't know if they were talking about a specific kind of PEX. Also, and I'm not saying I believe them 100%, but Nibco says their Dura-Pex will expand and contract and is freeze resistant. EDIT: and Dura-Pex is Pex-C and it doesn't mention anything about expansion fittings in the brochure, just compression fittings. (There's a little thing on Pex ABC in that FAQ I linked to.) Seems like Vanguard Pex uses the Pex-B silane method of crosslinking (which makes it strong) which has lower crosslinking than Dura-Pex (hit with an electron beam: Pex-C) or Uponor (Engel/peroxide method: Pex-A). From what I've read, the electron beam method and the peroxide method have about the same amount of crosslinking but the Pex-B has less, but still more than other plastic. el_caballo fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Sep 4, 2009 |
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Sep 4, 2009 17:21
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