Anything plastic is toxic generally. I remember drinking out of new pex pipes and it tasted like shit. I had to avoid it for a entire summer.
Give me your best pex redpipe pills.
How bad is PEX for you?
Anything plastic is toxic generally. I remember drinking out of new pex pipes and it tasted like shit. I had to avoid it for a entire summer.
Give me your best pex redpipe pills.
bruh, it's monolithic crosslinked polyethylene. that's it. it's inert and doesn't do anything to you.
but go ahead and enjoy your zinc flux if you like the flavor better.
>he fell for the pex meme
PEX is great.... for electric cable insulation.
As for pipes, not that great, because it is kinda weak, gets brittle due to chlorine in the water.
Zinc flux gets flushed away moment you flush toilet and use a washing machine. It is much more soluble in water than whatever chemical they used in PE production
>As for pipes, not that great, because it is kinda weak, gets brittle due to chlorine in the water.
pretty sure you're not suppose to have that much chlorine in your drinking water, and if you do, pex would last longer than copper anyways
We will see. I've swapped PP-R with copper at house where I live (because fittings got brittle because no fricking idea why, PP-R should be inert as frick to everything, I guess it was installed wrong). Other property that I rent out has PEX of unknown origin from the builder. It got yellow in 5 or so years.
>PE by itself is too soft to make pipe out of,
PE pretty stiff to make pipe. Water pains is HDPE for example, thermoplastic. Problem is when you transport hot water. Which is why they cross-link it, which makes it more heat-resistant. Which is why I like PEX for wires (or XLPE as it is called in case of wires). It is all benefits of PVC and silicone in one wire. Wear resistance of PVC and heat resistance of silicone. Cheaper than PTFE or FEP wire.
>Copper is ok, but water hammer is a b***h, installation is a b***h, and repairs are a b***h
Idk I really liked installing copper pipe. Was oddly satisfying to see solder getting sucked it, and then you look in the fitting and see silver ring inside.
Also annealing it and bending was also kinda cool. Repairs are kinda easy too.
But then, I can see somebody doing this for living, he'd have sore wrist for sure from all the sanding and hand skin fricked due to flux which is kinda spicy, especially when hands have cuts in them.
Also no risk of fire is great too.
Also, in wires they use PEX-C (irradiated with electron beam) or sometimes even UV I think.
Wonder why it is not used in plumbing as much.
This.
Pex, polyethylene and polypropylene are among the safest plastics. Those ziploc containers and bags are made of the same stuff, I’ve had both for over 20 years with no issues. My water never tasted funny.
CPVC and PVC are among the worst, and those are doped with the heaviest amount of plasticizers.
I don’t think there are any plasticizers in Pex. BPA/S/F are also bad, banned in a lot of places, yet they still line the cans of every can of soda, baked beans, tomato sauce, soup, etc. and soak in the BPA goodness.
Except british products, where they actually enforced the ban.
Back to PEX, after 20 years the inside of my heavily used pipes have yellowed on the inside. especially the hot water. The rarely used ones are pristine. The older yellow ones also appear pristine except for the color, and I had no problem expanding them back on the tees, I’d say they’re good for at least another 25 years.
Zinc flux is probably not that bad for you. Zinc chloride is the antibacterial in the non-alchoholc mouthwashes like listerine ‘zero’.
However, there is a flushing procedure to get it out which takes hours over high temperature and some kind of solvent. I think it’s on they oatey web site.
It’s not in a water based medium so it not just gone on first flush.
>Zinc flux is probably not that bad for you. Zinc chloride is the antibacterial in the non-alchoholc mouthwashes like listerine ‘zero’.
Flux isn't pure zinc chloride. It contains other stuff, like ammonium chloride.
>CPVC and PVC are among the worst, and those are doped with the heaviest amount of plasticizers.
PVC smells good. Esp one from China.
>ammonium chloride
tastes good btw, probably not good for you in large quantities but nothing really is.
>light match
>let the end burn off
>put it out
>eat the match head
did a lot of this as a kid
Walmart started stocking ammonium chloride next to the msg
There are phthalates in pex iirc.
well, you remember incorrectly then. there are no pthalates in pe.
yes, many plastics have additives. pe is not one of those.
>yes, many plastics have additives. pe is not one of those.
If PEX was made of pure polyethylene, then it wouldn't come in red and blue.
The color is a thin layer on the outside.
The inside is unadulterated PEX.
Go buy some and investigate it before jumping to conclusions.
>Go buy some and investigate it before jumping to conclusions.
It's not pure crosslinked polyethylene and you're stupid.
https://sci-hub.ru/10.1016/s0043-1354(02)00576-6
"Several VOC were observed in the test water from
PEX pipes,but relatively few were identified. The
identified VOC were mainly constituted by oxygenates with MTBE as the major individual VOC."
That's like saying a can of soup has paper in it because of the outer label.
This is correct for PEX-A. By the time it reaches the end of the extruder and hardens into pipe, it is effectively inert. Silane-processed PEX-B also contains silicon, but it also effectively inert.
Many other types of polyethylene do, but not PEX. Plasticizers are so named because they soften polymers by disrupting their structure with irregular units that stay in the final matrix (sort of, because they leach out after a while). PE by itself is too soft to make pipe out of, so it's hardened by cross-linking the polymers to each other, by irradiation or chemical means, but the end result is basically pure carbohydrate.
PVC is too brittle to make pipe out of, so it's doped up with all manner of plasticizers. They eventually leech out into your water, causing the pipe (esp. CPVC) to get brittle over time.
For longevity, flow, and ease of installation, PEX-A with brass fittings and copper at point-of-use is unbeatable. PEX-B is lame because you have to go up a full pipe size to equal the flow of PEX-A. If you use plastic fittings, they're probably ABS and possibly include plasticizers.
Copper is ok, but water hammer is a b***h, installation is a b***h, and repairs are a b***h. You also have to worry about pinholes forming and galvanic corrosion.
as
said, it's cross-linked i.e. stabilized. Consumer disposable plastic is not.
It gets weak because poisonous substances are added to the water on the states. PEX was developed by the germans. They do not put hydrofluorosilicic acid (smokestack scrubber effluent) into their water.
It's highly corrosive.
Thneb how do they reduce their testosterone levels and keep.their population compliant?
You must follow the protocols!
They drink beer and (their) mineral water, both of which have plenty of fluoride.
I'm strongly against plastic but I am not very worried about pex because a) it's not exposed to sunlight ever so it won't break down very quickly if at all and b) the water rarely sits in the pipe, it flows from the main through the pex and out of your tap
if you are afraid of microplastics or any type of harmful chemicals, there is pretty much no where on the planet you could escape it. It's in the water, in the rain clouds, the atmosphere to some degree, pretty much anywhere. Go ahead and use copper pipes or drink out of your stainless steel bottle, but you can never escape the poison 100%
i think a lot probably depends on water quality.. some water will just dissolve stuff and add chemicals to solution while some can be too full of stuff to dissolve much i imagine and you have to worry about calcification and stuff? dunno speculation
The 'plastic' used in PEX is very stable. As in 'tens of thousands of years' stable. If the water coming from a PEX line tastes like shit, it is because the water tasted like shit before it entered the PEX.
I've been using PEX whenever possible for at least a decade now. Just so much easier than sweating copper, easier to run than PVC. And I have never once had a connection fail if it passed a go/no-go gauge check at the time of install.
PEX is great for most cases. You have to be careful in cities and certain buildings because of rodents. They will gnaw just to gnaw or because they know there is moisture inside.
A properly built house will never need to worry about that though.
>A properly built house will never
This is PrepHole anon
You should really be recommending copper
It makes frogs gay
So there's that
>Anything plastic is toxic generally.
wrong
My house was built in the 1960's.
The copper pipes started splitting within a week of me moving in.
Picture if you will: copper on brass on galvanized on lead.
Rebuilt with PEX after doing the research.
(Best DYI option for the budget.)
Every hot / cold branch off the new manifold got an isolation cut off switch. It came in handy when the laundry shed PVC line bust in the winter.
No loss of service to the rest of the house while I did repairs.
My rule is also to add shutoffs everywhere useful for renovation or damage control. Any pipe I sever usually gets a shutoff at that point so I can repair at leisure.
>My rule is also to add shutoffs everywhere useful
Same, in the basement I have within reach shutoffs: After main shutoff there is 1 as backup, to the outside hose, to both hot and cold on water heater, to both hot and cold going to bathroom, to both hot and cold going to kitchen.
The toilet normal valve is fine, the kitchen and sinks are good too but the added shutoffs is more if some shit went wrong in the walls and may take a few days to sort out.
anyone seen stainless plumbing in a home...with something like swageloks for connections?
not bad at all, that is you can only buy proper products here with approved product certificates, guess you can find chinesium pex that gives you cancer if you live in some shithole but i dont.
it's safe just like teflon cooking products and scotch guard...trust the science...it's better living through chemistry!
what tools do i need to diy install copper pipe? I have a pipe cutter and saws and shit. I have a iwatani culinary butane torch that really kicks ass, is that going to be enough to solder? Then i need to pressure test? do they do air pressure testing with copper water supply?
You're gonna want more heat than a little torch. Mapp gas is preferred.
You'll need a deburring,roughing tool, Flux and solder. Don't cut with a saw, use your pipe cutter
Soldering copper is stupid simple. Hard part is not setting anything on fire. And make sure the joints are dry before starting