Plumbing with Pipes That Fit

Plumbing With Pipes That Fit

Now right up front I want to tell my readers that I am not a plumber or a plumbing expert. In fact , along with electrical work around the house, plumbing is among the things I like to do least of all. Whenever I have a plumbing or electrical repair to do I talk it over with the guys and girls at work and I do a lot of homework first. I would recommend to anyone that isn’t comfortable with the basics to hire a professional plumber or electrician rather than risk injury or damage to yourself or your home. With that said though I did want to discuss a very important plumbing issue in this week’s column.

Piping that delivers water throughout the system in your home has changed a lot over the past number of years. Many decades ago water would have been moved around your house in lead pipe, galvanized pipe and eventually copper pipe. Copper, of course, is still used extensively but for some time now we have become more and more dependent on plastic pipe. I’m sure that almost everyone out there has either seen or heard of the gray PVC pipe that began being used several years ago as an easy and cheap alternative to copper. It came in a variety of standard sizes, didn’t need to be soldered, and was easy to cut and install with a bunch of different “crimped” on fittings. Somewhere along the way, in Canada at least, PVC fell out of favor with the industry and the regulators and a new pipe was introduced. PEX pipe is the most often required plastic pipe for new homes and renovations today. I don’t know all of the technical reasons that caused PVC pipe to be removed from the market but I do know that PEX pipe, or Crosslinked Polyethylene tubing, is supposed to more stable and stronger in many ways.

The main focus of this piece is to discuss the sizing of these products because people are having problems after they replace older pipe in their homes and not every plumbing professional is telling the same story to their customers. In my research I have discovered that not everyone agrees on the answer to the big question about what size pipe to use when replacing copper in your home. Here is what I have found out in a nutshell:

Copper pipe and the associated fittings, either copper, brass or plastic, are consistently sized inside the pipe where the water flows.
The fittings for PEX pipe are installed inside the pipe, thus reducing the volume of water that flows throughout the system.
The same size pipe, say half-inch, in copper and PEX, will not carry the same volume of water.
Distance traveled, the number of fixtures, and their location all have a reducing effect on water flow.
Municipal, provincial, and national building codes seem to vary and are not always clear as they relate to the size of pipe that should be used.

I discovered that, for example, water flow, or volume, can be doubled by using ¾ inch pipe instead of ½ inch, whether you use copper or plastic. I also found that the majority of sources I spoke to recommended going from ½ inch copper to ¾ inch PEX where larger houses were involved and where there was a sufficient number of fixtures to warrant it. A standard single bathroom house can have about 18 fixtures in it, a two-bath home, 24, and a three bath home can have over 36 fixtures. With this many outlets and that much piping the homeowner must use the right size pipe. A friend of mine recently spent over five thousand dollars having all of the water pipe replaced in his home, a home with well over two dozen outlets for water, and now he has a flow problem. They suspect that the wrong size pipe was installed thereby reducing the volume of water delivered along the system.

Naturally the issue of pipe sizing in your home is not as simple as just asking for larger pipe because you fear there may be a problem; you must do the homework and get advice first. You can talk to a few plumbers, go to the building code department at municipal hall, and use the internet for ideas too. Ask questions, take your time, and don’t be swayed by anyone who claims to have been in the business for a long time, get different opinions. I always investigate thoroughly before I tackle any plumbing job, remember I told you I don’t particularly like it.

From an article published in The Maple Ridge NEWS – October 18, 2003