What did you do, lose the topic? This is about PLUMBING, not roofs....
If you had read what I wrote, which had nothing to do with roofs, I said that plastic pipe is not durable and I would not use it for that reason. I followed up with the aesthetics, which are not nearly as important.
LEARN HOW TO READ ....
If I bought a house with galvanized pipe I'd plan on replacing it ALL as soon as possible
I've used SharlBites twice and have no complaints so far.
One time I turned off the water, cut a pipe, capped it and turned the water back on before the commercial was over. I didn't miss a second of the football game and my wife, who was in the kitchen making dinner at the time, never even knew that I had turned the water off.
Another time I used a SharkBite Tee to tap into a copper pipe at the front of the house (which was at street pressure) then ran a length of PEX across the basement ceiling and used a SharkBite straight connector to connect the PEX to the copper pipe at the backyard hose spigot. Less than an hour's work to get street pressure to the backyard hose.
Both of these connections were made in the tight quarters near the basement ceiling above storage cabinets - not a location where I would have wanted to sweat copper.
One of the many advantages of the SharkBites is their ability to swivel even after installation. With copper, you need to "aim" each fitting to get the pipe to run in the direction you need. With SharkBites, you just pop them on and swivel them in any direction you want.
Costly yes, but damn convenient. In my case, I feel the cost was justified based solely on the fact that I didn't have to sweat fittings in locations where access was severely limited.
reply:
what he said ................
wrote
I bet I could get every exposed copper pipe out of your house while you are awake in the next room. Tubing cutter is virtually silent.
Same situation for me. Putting in a bathroom in daughter's basement, I needed to get the water to the toilet - I had the concrete cut out for the drain but didn't want to remove any more concrete than necessary, so I drilled the concrete and put a plastic pipe in as a "sleave" and the copper pipe inside that -kinda hard to solder down under the concrete, but the shark-bite worked beautifully. - packed with sand after. Then I needed to bring water down the end wall for the basin - but the furnace duct was 2 inches from the wall, and against the joists - and was to be boxed in with drywall. Virtually impossible to get to with torch to solder it, so again a shark-bite was used.
At $8+ each, vs $0.37 for a solder LB, I thought long and hard about it (I'm a cheap guy) - but there will be no question if I ever get into that kind of situation again.
On Tue, 26 Apr 2011 20:19:53 -0400, snipped-for-privacy@snyder.on.ca wrote:
That make no sense unless you know the pipes need replacing, or galvanized commonly fails in your area due to water chemistry. Scaling up and corrosion depends on the water where you live. Same with copper pinholing and corrosion. I don't want to beat a dead horse, but here near Chicago where we use Lake Michigan water, galvanized works well. My last house has 90 year old galvanized in the wall vertical runs and never leaked. Do you have a 90 year old copper or PEX example? I replaced the basement horizonal runs due to reduced hot water flow. That pipe was 60 years old, and the mineral scale clogging was mostly around the water heater joints. There was no serious corrosion, and nothing ever leaked. My current house has 50 year old galvanized, and no leaks. It seems the hot water flow is a bit low. I could just replace the fittings and short runs around the water heater to fix that, but if it wouldn't be much more work to replace it all from the service entrance up to the verticals. If the verticals look bad I would just open the 2 plumbing walls and replace them too. The more I read of copper pinholing, the less suitable it seems. Despite what I read here, wider reading has led me to the conclusion not to replace with copper when I do it, but to use new galvanized. If PEX meets code here, I'd use it before copper. But I can't see a reason to use PEX instead of galvanized here. I don't know why copper even got started here. Plumber chic? Anyway, pipe selection is like real estate. Location, location, location.
--Vic
Our Home Depot has a display where you can play with the SharkBites. Put them together, take them apart, PEX to Copper, etc.
When I bought the ones I used, I didn't bother spending the $3 (?) on the disassembly tool. All you really need is anything that will push the release ring evenly back into the fitting.
I don't recall what I used, but I took one apart at home just as a test and had no problem using some tool or object that was just laying around the shop.
I can actually see not buying one. It takes all of 5 minutes to make. I can imagine SBs used in some tight locations may be near impossible to disconnect without a specially fabricated tool.
Jimmie
You wrote, "I feel that plumbing should be SOLID PIPE..." I wrote, "I feel all roofs should be slate or tile."
I will walk you though it. SOLID PIPE is a stupid term, because pipe is hollow. SOLID PIPE is a stupid term as all pipe is solid - that is, there is no such thing as lattice-work plumbing pipe. SOLID PIPE is stupid because typing in all caps is for nimrods. Solid pipe...assuming you mean something like copper or galvanized, is expensive to install and quite durable - just like a slate roof.
Your feelings are ever so important to me, but when it comes right down to it I, like most people, will be making my decision based on a risk vs. reward analysis. Sad to say your feelings don't enter into it but dollars do. Sorry.
Learn to think. Thank you for finally seeing that the aesthetics have nothing at all to do with choosing plumbing pipe material.
How durable is copper when the pipes freeze? PEX expands and when it thaws out, the PEX will shrink back down to its original size without damage. There are tradeoffs in everything. Yours is trading off logic so you can hang on to your opinion.
It's highly entertaining that you believe CPVC (plastic) to be "pretty reliable" but another plastic, which you have obviously never used or even read up on, you believe to be crap. Willful ignorance is a pretty much bulletproof armor, eh?
R
JW is a SNERT. (Snot Nosed Egotistical Rude Teen) Don't pay him any attention.
He poses spew, and seriously doubt he's ever done any home repairs. His vocabulary is adolescent, and his responses do not address any context being discussed.
HTH
Steve
Heart surgery pending?
This stuff is like Velcro, Super Glue, and other things that we didn't have in our childhood, but are common now. Now that they are common as leaves, we wonder how we ever lived without them, and recall all the repair nightmares that would have gone a lot better with such simple fixits. I'll still sweat pipes during new construction, and in places that are not tight or fire sensitive. But for a slam dunk git'r'done and go watch the game, or rescue SWMBO from an emergency water situation, they are the best. For all the time and risk saved, they are well worth the extra bucks, IMHO.
Steve
Heart surgery pending?
...and you didn't burn the house down.
..
...what he said, especially about the use of sweat fittings whenever possible.
When I did my "tap into the street pressure pipe" project, the run from the PEX at the ceiling down to the pipe which ran through the wall to the hose spigot involved a number of twists and turns to keep it neat along the block wall.
I sweating up a zig-zagged section with about 6 fittings on the workbench, attached it to the wall, and then used a single SharkBite up near the ceiling to tie it into the PEX.
Using SharkBites for the entire project would have been rather expensive, using all PEX would have looked out of place along the back wall, so I mixed and matched and ended up with a cost-effective outcome that looks good.
m...
Thats the way I did a manifold in a house I flipped. Worked well. Looks good too especially if you polish it up. One of the things the buyer mentioned.
Jimmie
IIRC I used an open end wrench - the thin "tappet" type
I'm waiting..... I'm still waiting..... Well, where the hell are you coming????
You did want a bath, right? I cranked up the water pressure just for you..... :)
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