Goodbye Copper, Hello Pex and Aluminum

An aluminum

around pennsylvania rust is a major problem, coating guardrails only helps till the coating is damaged by say someone scraping it.

road salt causaes much of the problem, i will try a magnet on some this week.

i suppose they could spot weld the guardrails to the uprights to make them more vandal resistant.

i took a bunch of scap in recently they now make a copy of your drivers license, no doubt the poilce will be called if you take in guardrails or light poles.

Reply to
hallerb
Loading thread data ...

They use aluminum pipe for guardrails on bridges. We scored some leftover from the Beltway and used it for a TV mast. It was around 3.5" used on the bottom and 4" used on the top which nested together fairly well and got us about 50' in the air. It was enough to get the Redskins from Richmond when they were blacked out in DC.

Reply to
gfretwell

Here in the rust belt, most highway guard rails are steel K-rail style. Coated steel, heavily galvanized. They last okay. A formerly common name for the was Armco rails, related, I presume, to the company that came up with a coating method that works. Yeah, I do remember rusty rails from the old days, but anything put up in last 20-30 years seems to be fine.

aem sends...

Reply to
ameijers

(snip)

Either you built that place earlier than you remember, or your supply house gave you some real old stock. I was a gofer in my old man's construction company in that era, and the romex we used was all plastic skin by 1966 when my father built his dream house. My grandmother's 1961 house had the multi-layer cloth stuff, as does the original part of the expanded 1960 cookie cutter I am sitting in now.

But to the question at hand- nothing but copper for household wiring and potable water supply side. PVC is okay for drains. Haven't ever used PEX- I understand it is popular in Europe- but it has a bad rep in this country from the cheap crap they put in trailers, er, 'manufactured housing', for several years.

aem sends...

Reply to
ameijers

I believe you may have polybutylene and pex confused. Pex seems totally different than PB. I believe pex has around 30 years service in Europe. Many contractors going with pex now as the "copper recyclers" will break out the drywall to get the copper plumbing and wiring.

Reply to
Mr.E

(snip)

I do believe you are right- I drive a desk these days, and those old acronyms run together in the mists of memory. I'm old fashioned- I like copper.

aem sends...

Reply to
ameijers

HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.