PB piping

[smodery]

I have read some questions on this board about PB. The manufacturers have been pushing it in Australia the last few years. Has the composition of the pipe changed after the problems in USA or are they dumping it in other countries? Also how does the plumbing industry feel about it?

[Grahame Moss (Mossy)Participant]

Mossy:—Polybutylene piping is pretty much a dead issue since the class action suit got under way a few years ago. Almost a billion dollars was put into a settlement fund to compensate owners for costs involved in replacing this piping material. As usual the bulk of this money has been consumed by the Lawyers that are administering the settlements. Most of the failures stemmed from the plastic fittings that were used to fabricate the piping systems. There has also been many failures in coiled tubing that developed stress cracks when unrolled (some discussion has implicated Chlorine as being a cause of these pipe failures). The Plumbing Industry has pretty much written this product off as a serious piping material because of the litigation and hassle. The latest entry to try to fill the void left by PB is a new cross linked Polyethylene material called PEX (Trade Name), and is assembled in a similar fashion as PB was. There has been a shift to the use of brass insert fittings as a means of assembly instead of thermoplastic mechanical fittings. Pex has found favor in the heating Industry as a radiant heating tube to be embedded in concrete. Pex, like PB has to be protected from UV radiation and is prone to mechanical damage and can be gnawed easily by rodents and other critters. Im afraid that there is a pox associated with PB that is not apt to go away anytime soon…Bud

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