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Comment by jefftk | Hacker News Reader

20 years sounds really short to me? I've seen numbers quoted anywhere from 30 to 50 for PEX.

I'm in a 25 year old building and we had to replace all the plastic piping last year. The pipes became fragile and started randomly bursting. In about 50 apartments, we were having about 2 leaks a year, and were finding it hard to find plumbing companies to actually repair them.

Were they CPVC pipes? PEX usually doesn't randomly burst unless it's installed incredibly improperly or there's a major manufacturing defect.

I believe I've ABS pipes in the condo in suburban hell, but one cracked and left a pretty nasty mess. The whole development is about 40 years old so maybe it's age related, maybe not. One thing I've learned is that these pipes had a high rate of defects when new.

It's been interesting living in a new-ish apartment building. Everything in the condo was garbage (the early 80s were not kind to construction in the US) assembled reasonably well. Everything in this apartment is pretty reasonable quality assembled by a small army of blind glue sniffing idiots.

My concern with plastic pipes is wildfire. Up in the north bay the municipal water was rendered toxic and unusable after fires got things hot enough so that carcinogens were leeching into the water. That's less of a concern with individual buildings, but it's not fun when a city or water district has to rip everything out of the ground.

If it's gray plastic that's poly b, they're banned around here for that.

I couldn't tell you what cities laid down up north, but I wouldn't be surprised if they'll build it back with something else (plastic or otherwise). My place has black plastic pipes that I think are explicitly called out as ABS.

That was probably polybutylene. PEX has been installed even before that (since the 1950s) and proven longevity, while polybutylene piping was already beset with lawsuits in the 1980s. As usual, the USA only does the right thing after exhausting all other options.

Actually, I'm remembering there were some widespread failures of PEX-C. Hmm.

Yeah I know of CPVC piping that is at well over 20 years and still OK. It does get brittle with age though.

CPVC is brittle right off the factory line. Improper handling during transport and install are suspected to be the bulk of the issues down the road. Tiny micro-fractures occur when the pipe is dropped, struck, or even left to sit in the sun too long, which creates weak points and eventual failure. The only use I’ve seen for CPVC in modern installs is the discharge pipe for the TMP valve on water heaters. Can’t use regular PVC because it’s not rated for heated water.

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