Aarrgh - need a break - I'm plumbing a new kitchen.
Lots of people say how good the plastic pipe is, and it is used on a lot of newbuild, so I thought I'd try it. But I hate it. It curls up on itself, you can't put a bend in it, the joints are huge, and because it is flexable I find I measure it inaccurately. So I'm going to bin it and buy some 15mm copper.
What do other people think?
Tony
I agree. Learning the fairly easy skills to use copper gives a much more satisfactory job. Plastic is ideal for those who don't have to live with it afterwards and are only making a quick buck.
I don't like it, it needs wrestling to the wall and always seems to look contorted.
It can come in handy but I dont think you can beat a rigid, straight length of copper bracketed firmly to the wall exactly where you want it.
In article , tonyjeffs scribeth thus
You must have money to burn buying copper!....
I like it. It does take some getting used to. The joints are (in general) too bulky. The pipe does tend to curl awkwardly. But the compensations of being able to get it into places that would otherwise be very difficult, of (often) having considerable leeway in cutting, of less condensation on the surface, of quieter flows, of being able to get a large amount home in a small car, of being able to run 10 metres round a house as a single, unjoined length, and others - well, these tip the balance. But I am perfectly happy to use a bit of copper as and when appropriate.
I'll give you one example. I needed to feed cold water to the downstairs cloakroom. One pipe down alongside the stack pipe, curved round to horizontal and a final curve up to the cistern. I'd guess around 4 metres of pipe. Honestly, just getting the run downstairs would have been awkward in copper. (All behind cupboards, to be boxed in, etc. so neatness achievable with copper not an issue.) Then, a few weeks ago, I added an outdoor tap from that same pipe. A simple tee and stop valve and out through the wall. (Had I used copper originally this would have resulted in access being a problem for this job.) But I did use a brass compression joint for the external elbow.
I can understand stuff bought by the coil just wanting to be back in the coil but doesn't the bought straight stuff behave well?
I agree the fittings are a bit big, think I mix 'n match depending on visibilty. Having spent the best part of two days doing a bathroom mostly in 22mm copper with a fair few pulled bends next time I'll use plastic if only 'cause I expect it to be far quicker.
Horses for courses.
Plastic is great for getting into awkward places - threading through joists etc. - but copper is much better anywhere where it shows. You also need a length of rigid pipe on kitchen taps installed in SS sinks, to give a bit of rigidity to the taps.
Buy it when it's cheap for 'stock'. ;-)
You're making a mistake to try to do it /all/ in plastic. It's horses for courses. I use plastic (polybutylene, not PEX - pb is generally less springy and easier to handle) for hidden runs in awkward places such as in underfloor voids, stud walls and ducts, and sometimes for connections to taps etc under baths, sinks & basins. Where the pipework is going to be visible or needs to be rigid I use copper.
Likewise with fittings: pushfit in some locations, compression or (for copper) soldered in others.
In the case of kitchens I will sometimes put in a couple of horizontal runs of copper along the walls as sort of busbars with washing machine connectors and feeds to taps and other bits hung off them, feeds of HW in and CW in and out via plastic - or as appropriate.
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember tonyjeffs saying something like:
Use Tektite.
I think you need more practice and to get the straight lengths of pipe, which make it much easier to work with.
Had to do something similar for friend the other day - he wanted a hot and cold feed from the airing cupboard at one corner of the house, down to a new cloakroom on the ground floor at the opposing corner. It would have been seriously disruptive to have done that in rigid pipe. In the end I opened up a hole above the soffit (chalet style house), fed several lengths of fibreglass cable fishing rod through from front to back under the first floor, and pulled through two 14m lengths of PBX. Ran along the eves above the soffit (heavily lagged!) and back into the target room, down behind some drylining, round a corner and to the point the basin would be mounted. Finished off the final connections in chromed copper.
What joints? If you use plastic you don't need many joints. On a new build you would put in a manifold and run a pipe to each outlet with no joints at all.
tonyjeffs coughed up some electrons that declared:
I'm coming late to this, but I'll put my ha'peth in.
I like copper. It's known to generally last forever (pin-holeing crap aside). It looks neat when run and it can take a bit of abuse. After a bit of practise, soldering joints doesn't take very long.
I'm not saying that doesn't apply to decent plastic, but I don't have 1st hand experience that it does, so I'd rather stay with what I know.
The two things that worry me about plastic are:
1) Will the push-fit grippers give way and blow the joint apart (same with copper push fit)? My static mains pressure is 7.5 bar (fairly high).2) How long do those O-rings actually last? I pondered this also after I unclipped the cooker's from the gas bayonet open the other day...
The answers might well be 1) never and 2) forever, but as I say, no personal experience...
The price of copper with end feed fittings isn't that much in the grand scheme of things, once you've got your sinks and radiators, tank(s) and boiler(s) [hello Drivel].
But in the spirit of trying new things, I'll get a bit of plastic to do some temporary connections to the bog when I have to clear the old copper and iron out of the way, just to see what they're like...
Cheers
Tim
Nothing lasts for ever - not even copper. I plumbed my utility room in plastic nearly 20 years ago - and that's still going strong. It's at the opposite end of the house to anywhere where there was previously a water supply - and so involved a tortuous route along the landing and under a bedroom floor. It was a (relative) doddle to drill the joists and pull a single length of plastic pipe through rather then trying to wangle copper in - which would have involved multiple joints.
I can vouch for 28 years in both mains and CH. My mains pressure is high enough to explode a watering computer, I have had to put a 3.5 bar reducer on the garden tap as a result.
You're not the only one to ponder that. However, you can use compression fittings on plastic. Don't forget the sleeves though.
snipped-for-privacy@privacy.net coughed up some electrons that declared:
Interesting - I'd feel happier with that. Is that the method used to join MDPE (have to extend a bit of the main)?
Cheers
Tim
I'm going to use one foot of plastic pipe to the outside tap. It ,might be safer if we have a freezing cold spell- it may have some give, some expansion capacity. Otoh I could be completely wrong. Those joints might pop off with a bit of frost. To
I used plastic pipe to our new external tap. With brass compression fittings!
But if it gets truly cold, will turn it off from inside - and, if I remember, drain it.
I've had Hep2O fittings crack with frost on outside pipes and, for that reason, wouldn't recommend them where there is the posibility of them freezing.
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