hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr3604.txt

Episode: 3604
Title: HPR3604: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About PEX Part 01- Let's Talk About PEX - Introduction 
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3604/hpr3604.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 02:04:32

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,604 for Thursday, the 26th of May 2022.
Today's show is entitled, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About PEX Part 1 Let's Talk About PEX Introduction.
It is hosted by Trey and is about 13 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag. The summary is Introduction to PX.
Hello and welcome to a new series, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About PEX.
This is Part 1. Let's Talk About PEX and Introduction.
So why am I recording this? What's my story?
Well, I'm posting about plumbing on Hacker Public Radio, right? Well, of course, because it's of interest to hackers.
I find it interesting. I consider myself a hacker. We all like to learn new things.
We like to understand how things work, how things break, how to use non-standard approaches to solve problems.
And others can learn from our experience, our troubleshooting processes, etc.
And also I had fun creating these episode titles. So I hope you enjoy them as well.
I've listened to folks talk about installing cat doors and many other projects that were outside the normal technical type of hacker episode that I would normally expect.
And so I thought I would build on that.
The primary reason behind this is because I was dealing with pinhole leaks in my copper pipe in the plumbing of my house.
Now, my plumbing is about 40 years old. It's original to the house, and it was installed using poor quality copper.
Add to that, it had shoddy installation. It was awful. The person that installed it failed to deeper the pipe before they soldered the pipes.
They did not properly hang the copper pipe from the joists. You had pipe sitting on pipe. You had pipe sitting on steel wire.
Those dissimilar metals and electrolysis can cause corrosion inside and outside of the pipe. And it was a mess.
The failure to deeper causes turbulence inside the pipe, which can put pressure in one specific section of the pipe helping to form pinhole leaks from the inside.
And bad soldering technique. I mean, there was just lumpy solder flux residue, excessive flux that was used so that also causes corrosion and deterioration of the pipe itself.
And what the pinhole leaks actually result in is, I mean, literally this tiny, tiny mist of water spraying out of just a random section of the pipe.
In my case, these started below one of my living spaces and above my garage where the pipes were behind drywall in the ceiling.
And I would go to the garage and see water dripping on the floor. And you know, look up and see a section of the drywall that's discolored and saturated.
And, you know, I'd start to cut it out. And the fiberglass insulation that was in there would be just saturated with water.
Water pouring out gallons of water because it had been spraying for a while and we did not know it.
And we'll get to some of the things that you can do to address that. But that's the problem that I was trying to solve.
Another reason why we have them is in my part of the United States, we do have hard water.
What is hard water? Hard water is water that has a lot of minerals in it. And those can also cause deterioration inside the pipe.
They can build up and they can erode the pipe from the inside out.
Some of my neighbors are experiencing the same issue in their houses, but mainly only the ones that were built by the same builder as my home.
And as a result, we're starting to tie a lot of this to the building techniques that were used.
If you want to learn more about copper corrosion, I'm going to include a link to an episode of this old house on YouTube in the show notes where you can go and they'll talk more about copper corrosion
and how to stop copper corrosion. One of the final things that can also cause copper corrosion is high water pressure.
So early on, I tested my water pressure and normal water pressure for a residence in the United States is expected to be between 60 and 80 pounds per square inch.
I was able to go to my local big box supply store and get a test gauge that I could connect to one of the hose fittings outside, turn it on and measured consistently at 63 pounds per square inch.
So it was on the low side of normal. So high water pressure was not the problem, but we did indeed identify many of the other causes of the problem.
And it caused damage. The water leaks, as I mentioned, damaged the drywall in parts of my house, damaged items that were stored near that drywall, damaged my beloved first computer, my TI-994A, that I had in a box on a shelf that the cardboard turned to swish.
So that was very, very frustrating. I had many leaks in some of these areas that were difficult to find and went unidentified for a long period of time because of where the water was flowing.
This can also lead to damage, can lead to mold growth and other things like that. So had to fix the problem.
So what are possible solutions? Well, short-term solutions are obviously patch the leak, right? You want to get the leak resolved as soon as you can.
You can do this with a variety of different methods. One is epoxy kits where you can actually put an epoxy-based tape or an epoxy-based paste, sometimes an epoxy soaked string or other tape that you wrap around the tape.
Over and over and over again to kind of not let that water out. These can be inconsistent. Oftentimes they may not bond to a corroded tape.
And more often than that, they require you to turn off the water and dry the pipes, possibly even clean the pipes before you perform that.
But there is an option and it works for a lot of people. Another option is water activated tape. And this is tape that uses something similar to the adhesives you would find in like a gorilla glue where it's activated by moisture.
And again, these are on a tape you need access to the pipe where you're leaking. You would want to wrap it around that particular section. But again, it's inconsistent. It may not bond to corroded pipe.
You need to make sure your pipe is clean. Some of them may not bond if the pipe is if there's pressure in the pipe and the water is trying to spray out. You may be required to turn off the water and dry the pipes as well.
Another option is a solder on patch. Now these are more expensive. They do require clean, dry pipe exterior. So you have to turn off the water. You have to drain the pipe.
So there's no moisture. There's no water inside the pipe that would inhibit your ability to solder on that patch where you're using a torch and flames and heating up the pipe and melting the solder and all of that.
But it's a possibility. The solder on patches can work. But if you're going to go to that extent, it's really better to cut out that section of copper and put in a replacement section and solder that in place if you're going to be doing that type of soldering.
Another option is repair clamps. And I like repair clamps. They're fast. They can be applied in minutes, oftentimes with just a wrench or a ratchet. They're strong. They can hold back a lot of pressure and they can really work in situations where a lot of other things may not.
They can be used while the pipe is under pressure while the water is turned on while it's spraying out there, which is a really good time to do it for a pinhole leak because you can get some visibility as to where it's spraying out. Sometimes you have to shine a light at an odd angle to catch just where that that water is misting out and then line that up with the pad of the repair clamp.
I'm including several examples of repair clamps from different suppliers in the show notes. You can see some of what I'm talking about. They're designed for specific size pipes, but they work really well. And you need minimal clearance. You need enough clearance to get the clamp in place and to get a wrench in there, but they work for a lot of different situations.
The repair clamps is what I chose to use in the short term. And I ended up having about 10 pinhole leaks at different times over the course of about six months.
And so I was having to put them in quite frequently as I planned the process of replacing all the plumbing in my home.
And that brings us to long term solutions which require well replacing the plumbing in your home.
One of the long term solutions is repair the copper cutting out the damage section and replacing it.
You can replace it by soldering it in or you can replace it by using things like shark bite fittings. Shark bite is a brand and you shark bite allows you to press that onto the pipe.
And it makes a good seal assuming that your pipe is round assuming that there's you know that the outside of the pipe is clean.
It'll make a decent seal and then you can connect additional copper pipe with that or you can solder it in place.
Sattering is more time consuming. If you have many areas where there's corrosion is visible, you may want to cut out larger sections of the copper pipe and replace those.
But in a situation like mine where you have multiple areas where corrosion is visible and you have multiple times where pinhole leaks have been happening, it's a situation of whack them all.
What are you going to repair next? When is the next leak going to occur and then you're going to be doing the whole thing again, shutting off the water, draining the pipes, replacing a section, soldering it in place, charging the pipes again, crossing your fingers hoping for the rest.
Well, another option is to skip that and replace all of the copper that's in the house with all new copper. That's expensive.
And it's time consuming and it's difficult and copper comes in these long straight sections and it may not be easy to get to certain places where that copper needs to be.
So having a process in place for doing that can be challenging, can be time consuming, can be difficult and very expensive. Copper is extremely expensive right now.
So new copper is not really an option in most situations and it's going to deteriorate. If you have some of the same things that caused it to begin with, whether it's water pressure, whether it's improper installation, you want to make sure you're installing it right so that you don't cause the same issues.
Whether it's hard water, this contributing to it, you may just be postponing the problem for however long until it happens again.
Another option is PVC. You know, this can still be difficult because PVC tends to be a somewhat rigid product. So you're having to put in elbows and other things like that if you're going to be replacing all of the copper in your house, all of the copper piping in your house with PVC.
The last option is what we're going to be talking about this series, PEX. That's PEX, Papa, Echo, X-ray. And in the next part, we'll talk about what that actually stands for.
But PEX is available in many of your home improvement stores in the United States and around the world. It comparatively inexpensive compared to PVC and copper. It's extremely inexpensive compared to copper.
It's flexible. It's easy to install. And you can use the existing copper pipe as a support structure to kind of guide it if you choose to.
Another option when you're installing it is you can completely redesign your plumbing. And instead of following the existing plumbing and doing the same things that were there, you can install more of a central manifold, which is a bank of valves.
And allow you to isolate certain areas of the house, turn on or off water in specific areas of the house, while water in other areas of the house remains on, allowing you to better troubleshoot issues as they happen and making your installation.
If your installation is taking a period of time, if you're doing it yourself, allowing you to do that over a period of time without having to have all the water in your house shut off for an extended period of time.
So, this is the end of part 1. Let's talk about PEX. In part 2, we will experience the joy of PEX.
Thank you for listening.
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