hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr3624.txt

Episode: 3624
Title: HPR3624: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About PEX Parts 3 & 4
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3624/hpr3624.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 02:20:17

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3624 for Thursday the 23rd of June 2022.
Today's show is entitled, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About PEX Parts 3 and 4.
It is hosted by Trey and is about 14 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, Discusses Plumbing Code and Installation.
Welcome back to the series, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About PEX.
This is Part 3, PEX and the City, Ordinances.
How to make certain your installation meets code.
This will be a short episode and I will likely append Part 4 following this, but this
is important.
Since we have people from around the world who listen to Hacker Public Radio, I cannot
begin to speculate what your local building codes allow or prohibit.
In the majority of states within the United States of America, a property owner can perform
plumbing maintenance on their own residence.
Otherwise, you need to be a licensed plumber.
It may not be true for all states, and there can be inspections required and sometimes
even fines for code violations.
Rules also vary where PEX can be installed, how frequently it must be supported, whether
the work must be inspected, or whether it requires a permit.
The point of this section is to remind you to do your research to find out what the rules
in your specific region are, and then be sure to follow them.
And in doubt, consult a licensed plumber in your area.
Everything you always wanted to know about PEX, Part 4.
PEX, Lies, and Silicon Tape, my installation experience.
If you have missed the previous episodes in this series, I encourage you to review them
before continuing because they will provide valuable context around which my plumbing adventures
are explained.
So anytime you start a home improvement project, the best place to start is with the design,
the vision for what you want, that way you can best plan and anticipate the needs and
anticipate the positives, the negatives, and figure out what option is going to best
suit you.
In my case, I had two primary options.
Option 1 was to follow all of the existing copper pipe and simply replace it with PEX.
So when it came to an elbow, put in an elbow.
When it came to a tee, put in a tee, when it went to the hot water heater, take the main
line, go to the hot water heater, all the different things just follow the existing pipe.
That was, indeed, an option.
Option 2 was to install a manifold valve system and redesign everything from scratch, sending
the main feed line to the manifold, anyway, and a teaf come off from the cold water going
to the hot water tank, and then the hot water come back off of that to the hot side of the
manifold, have individual valves for the various different parts of my house, so I had
much more flexibility on what I wanted to do.
I ended up choosing the manifold valve system.
The other thing that had to be considered was whether I was going to be replacing everything
or connecting to some existing pipe or fixtures.
As you know, if you've listened to previous episodes, much of my copper pipe was in
pretty bad shape, but when it came closer to the appliances and the sections of pipe that
were used less, those pieces of pipe were in better shape.
And pecs coming through the walls then involves you cutting out sections of the walls, replacing
those valves, a lot of individual challenges there.
And you have the option to do that.
My choice when I was doing the design was to get as close as I could to those and then
cut the copper before it came through the floor up into the living part of the residence
and solder on a adapter that would go from the pecs type B that I was using to the copper
and that ended up working out best for me.
The next thing you have to consider is your materials.
Again, pecs A versus pecs B and we talked about that in part three and the pros and
the cons of each of those, you have to make the decisions for yourself.
In my case, pecs B1, mainly because I could get more parts more easily at my local home
improvement store with pecs B. So if it's in the middle of the night or it's on a weekend
and something goes wrong and I have to do a quick fix, I know I can run to my home improvement
store and find a part there to help with a quick fix as opposed to waiting until normal
business hours to go to a plumbing store.
So that was really the main deciding factor for me on pecs B was the availability of connectors.
The other materials that I had to think about were manifolds.
Manifolds are sections of valves that you can use for turning on or off specific parts
of your plumbing.
I'm going to include a link in the show notes for some of the options for pecs manifolds.
But really, you can almost think of these like the breaker box that you have for your
electricity where you can turn on or off certain specific sections of the house.
Now they don't automatically turn off like a breaker would if you have a problem.
But they do give you the flexibility that if you're wanting to work on the toilet in
one of the bathrooms and the valve is broken, you have to actually replace the valve stem
so you can't just turn off the valve of the toilet.
Now you can turn off the valve on the manifold and shut off the water possibly to that toilet,
possibly to that entire bathroom depending on how you have it configured, but still not
have to turn off all the water in the house for something like that.
So I will include the link in the show notes for some ideas on some manifolds.
And you get to choose which ones you want to use depending on how many different zones
you want to have, how much flexibility you want to have, what materials you want it made
of, what colors you want it to be, all sorts of things.
So there's a wide variety of manifolds that are available.
And then your connectors, you have to decide are you going to use new valves.
I put in several additional shut-off valves for different things so I could shut off
the water coming to the manifold right above the manifold.
I could shut off the water going to the water heater right above the manifold having a lot
of things there in specific areas.
What type of transition connectors are you going to need?
Are you going to be transitioning to copper like I was?
Are you going to do that with solder on connectors?
Are you going to try to do that with shark bite connectors?
Now, I'm going to pause here and talk a little bit about shark bite connectors because
I really think they're ingenious and I've played with them a little bit.
I chose to go with solder connectors for my particular situation, primarily because
the installer that put in my copper pipe did a really bad job.
He oftentimes would use a hammer just because, I guess, or to get the pipe to go in the
direction that he wanted it to go.
So my pipe was not always round and it was not always free of corrosion on the outside.
So I had difficulty with shark bite connectors when the pipe was not completely round getting
them on at all.
So I finally decided that a solder on connector was going to be best for me connecting to copper.
I had a whole process that I did with that.
I ended up getting a special brush for cleaning the pipe that I could mount on a cordless
drill.
So I could quickly and easily cut the existing copper pipe, clean the outside and deeper
it really, really well and deeper the inside of the copper pipe really well as well.
We talked about why that's important in part one and then be able to also get a similar
brush for cleaning the inside of the copper fitting to go onto the pipe, clean it really
good, flux them both, not over flux, but sufficient flux to get the copper, the solder to install
and get the fitting on there and get it soldered well and then proceed to connect the packs.
So that was what I ended up choosing.
You may have PVC in your house that you're connecting to from packs.
You can also do that with a shark bite tool or you can get pv or shark bite connector or
you can get PVC to packs fittings that simply glue onto the PVC.
It's much easier to go from PVC to or from packs to PVC than it is to go from packs to
copper, but both are doable.
You also have to consider how you're going to start, are you going to start at your main
water line?
How are you going to connect to your main water line?
In my case I decided that I was going to connect right where the water came in, the water
came in to a main shut off valve, then it went to a pressure regulator and then from there
there was a 3-quarter inch threaded in copper connector.
So I cut just a couple inches above that threaded in connector and I spent a good couple hours
trying to get that connector off.
My plan had been to unthread that 3-quarter inch connector, thread in a new connector
that would allow me to crimp, pecs right to it and go from there.
That did not work.
I was not able to get that connector out of the pressure regulator.
I was afraid I was going to do real damage.
I finally decided in the end that it was going to be best for me to simply solder onto that
section of pipe as well.
So I put a solder connection on there as well.
One of the other things you may also consider if you're replacing copper is how you're going
to cut it.
And we'll get to that in the tools section.
The next thing you have to consider is how are you going to connect to your water heater?
Do you want to redesign that to work with a manifold or are you going to follow existing
pipe?
I ended up going to the manifold and had to make some changes accordingly in my design.
But now it's much, much more flexible than I like it quite a bit.
Next you have to consider how you're going to hang it.
How are you going to suspend the pecs?
What are you going to fasten it to as it goes up and down walls?
As it goes across distances, you have to support it periodically and codes vary from location
to location on how that must be supported.
So make sure that you follow your codes.
But figure out what materials you need to hang it.
In my case, I followed a lot of the same copper pipe and used the copper pipe to hang the
pecs.
I was able to zip tie it sometimes to the copper pipe.
Other times put in anchor to anchor it to joists or to walls.
And finally, you'll need crimp rings, especially if you're using pecs B like I did.
You'll need metal crimp rings on that.
If you're using pecs A, you need the expansion rings.
But make sure you buy enough rings to do what you need.
After materials, you need tools.
You'll need the crimp tool or you'll need the expansion tool depending on if you're using
pecs A or pecs B.
I ended up getting an electric crimp tool, cordless crimp tool, battery powered to be able
to get into some of the tight areas and it worked really, really well for me.
You also may want to get a removal tool that helps you to replace a connector if you've
messed it up or something's not right and you have to take it off and redo it.
You may choose that you're going to use Shark Bite fittings for some of these things.
Make sure you have a depth gauge for the Shark Bite connector so you know where to mark
on the pecs so you know how far to push on the Shark Bite connector to know that it's
fully on.
Make sure that you can measure the same thing on copper to know that it's put on all
the way.
There's also a special Shark Bite removal tool if you choose to use Shark Bite fittings.
Make sure you have a tape measure.
Measure twice, measure three times, measure 15 times, then cut so that you don't end up
wasting a lot of materials.
Having a tape measure handy is very helpful.
Having some heavy duty mason string, mason's line or a wire fish can be helpful in getting
pecs into specific areas or through walls when you need to.
I found that was very, very helpful for me.
Then of course is planning.
Planning is different than design.
Planning is really your most important step.
Planning is where you take that design and you translate it into what's actually going
to happen.
With proper planning you can reduce your service outage.
In my case I was able to shut off the water and get the manifold put in and then start
to turn on specific areas of the house and get water to things like a bathroom pretty
quickly so that it was much less of an inconvenience to my family.
Some steps can be done before you shut off the water.
Like in my case I was able to pull most of the pecs throughout the house before I ever
came to the point of shutting down the water.
I was able to cut access holes, run pecs, make certain connections, get the manifold mounted,
all things like that before I ever shut off the water to again minimize the impact on
the family.
Planning is critical.
And then assistance.
While an individual installer can redo a house with pecs it's not ideal.
If you can get another person to help you it will make the process go much easier.
And that will lead us to part 5 which will be recorded later.
That talks about installing as a single installer, as an individual installer and the challenges
that you'll have there.
Thank you for suffering through my recounting of my adventures with pecs.
And I hope that you've enjoyed this and we'll tune into future episodes by now.
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