Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Tell Me About PEX

Had the house run a few years ago and i like it.

The fittings we got put on were brass and had to be crimped.

I tested 25 ft. for 5 years outdoors on top of the ground.
All tear round and it still looks like new.

Even ran over it with the truck and had no cracks,flat spots or problems.

When it freezes it don't bust like pipe it just grows fat.
Best 3,000.00 spent in a while.

Sure, requirements differ with region.
The OP is in Alaska, Wabigoon and I were discussing his home in NW Ontario when the need for heat tapes was mentioned.
In Alaska 6 to 8 feet below ground can be considered winter safe, in Montana it's often 4 to 6 feet. At my Florida home my supply line running to the house is 16 inches deep.

Old plumbers don’t like that pex stuff much. It looks like cshit no matter how you install it.

Once it's done, nobody will see it. Whatever line will be buried 6'+ and covered w 2" blueboard prior to backfill. It is to fill horse waterer. My wife is tired of me making her haul 125' of garden hose outside in the winter.

I'll need to T in to an existing line in the crawlspace (heated) out to the hydrant (buried valve). No need to blow out. The water will be run every 2-3 days to fill tank. HT is just to have available just in case. Doubtful It will freeze.

Still open to ideas. Thanks.

It'd be easier to just get rid of the horses...........Just sayin'.

I started out cutting and threading iron pipe and graduated to sweating copper pipe as my norm for in residential applications.
I gave a ho-hum to Pex (cross-linked polyethylene) probably due to the massive failure of Quest pipe (polybutylene 1978-1996) Quest was the predecessor of Pex.
Now, given time it has proven it's self, it is probably going to be around from now on.
It has it's strengths and weaknesses much like the copper pipe I prefer.

For industrial applications HDPE (high-density polyethylene) has taken the trade by storm, much like Pex has in residential applications. HDPE is now used where once PVC, Stainless and even Cast Iron pipe once ruled the roost.

My experience has been from hands on to project engineering oversight.

I have a plumber neighbor who today has a couple of hundred trucks on the road daily.
His crews are pretty young, few have a clue of how to sweat copper pipe, I doubt most would even recognize let alone know how to operate a pipe threader if one was in front of them. PEX rules their world, the plumbing trade involving installation of copper or iron pipe is lost.

No can do.

I know of a successful plumber in NJ that did the copper on my parents new home back in 1963. He related a story about getting a service call of pipe leakage a few years back and the 40 year old copper pipes were so worn out that they could be crushed by hand pressure. I would not even think of having a home not built with Pex tubing in it.

That has a lot to do with what they have put in the water over the last 40 years in NJ.
We'll see what 40 years does to the new PEX fittings and those little rings it's crimped together with.

My stock water source has always been a year round spring.
I just let it run all winter, makes for a hell'ov a mess in the spring and late fall....lol..

Our house in Tenn[purchased last year] has all Pex lines.
It is odd stuff when all that one is used to is copper which is what we've had both built houses done in.
I see you guys speaking of two different types of Pex?
Differences?

Actually they ran significantly less chlorine thru those lines then they did where I lived in FL and I mean a lot less. I would not want Pex with those crimp rings on any house I move into. I have been in mine for 18 years with no issues and it is crimped but it won't happen again after speaking to my brother.

The Wirsbo system uses a polyethylene band instead of a crimp on the PEX pipe but the install is too time consuming to be profitable for contractors.

Those are the type fittings I have in Tenn.
One thing that I couldn't understand is that the main line enters crawl-space, about 2' in it had a T going to outside spigot with no shutoff.
Of course the the spigot had split and was wrapped in some type of aluminum tape with a sealant substance[adhesive].
Thanks to Shark-Bite it now has a shutoff and new freeze free spigot.
First excursion into any plumbing beyond replacing a faucet or hose and I felt like I accomplished something!

He didnt get his Tee very straight.





I have replaced some lengths of copper in my folks house.


Installed in late 60's early 70's.


Was very surprised to see how thin they had become.

he doesn't mind

No he didn't, he tried a little to fix it but you could tell he knew it was too late, the band had already seated and gripped.
if it was copper, he could have heated it back up and fixed that.

I've used that product and tool demonstrated in the video, by the end of the day your arms and hands get real tired of pumping that tool. There is now a battery powered tool for that job, last time I priced one it was around $600.00.

I did a similar thing a few years ago, and I ran my water line inside 2 1/2" schedule 40. I was running it under a gravel driveway and I didn't want to chance gravel damaging the line. I ran the PVC close to both ends and then pulled the 1" water line through with a rope. Just suck a bread wrapper through with a sting tied to it using a vacuum cleaner, and then use that to pull the rope through. On each end I capped the schedule 40 with a rubber cap fastened by stainless clamps. I just punched a hole in them for the water line. It was a big job digging the trench and replacing two sections of concrete sidewalk but now I can change the line in the future and only have to dig a hole at each end. Oh yeah...I used 45 degree fittings instead of 90s so there weren't any tight corners.

I missed that the OP was in Alaska, my mistake. I wouldn't know where to begin trying, to keep things thawed out up there.

It's really easy, you just blow all the water lines clear and spend your winters in the sunny south....