|
|
Posted by David Sherman [72.47.9.228] on Tuesday, March 22, 2011 at 11:33:47 :
In Reply to: Re: Air Compressor, Shop Talk posted by mannyc [68.165.89.2] on Tuesday, March 22, 2011 at 09:27:17 :
No, the Pex is all indoors. My wood shop is in the basement and the line runs through the basement until the end where I have a stub of iron pipe that goes to the outside. It was very convenient to be able to snake it around all the posts and joists and corners and not have to put any fittings on it. The 3/4" is pretty stiff, at least when it's cold. You can't get very sharp bends in it and it takes some doing to get it straightened out. It made a tidy installation and much quicker and cheaper than copper.
Pex is a brand of polyethylene, same basic chemical as the regular black "poly" pipe. I'm not sure what, if anything, they do to it to make it rated for indoor water supply use. And of course it's a special size with it's own special fittings. If I had a really long run to do where I wanted larger pipe, I would use the conventional black polyethylene irrigation-type pipe that you put on the barbed plastic fittings with regular hose clamps. Also, because it's black, it's UV-resistant. I have about 1500' of it at my cabin, mostly laying on top of the ground across a sunny hillside, and it hasn't deteriorated in 10 years. The only problem is that where it's exposed, the bears find it and bite holes in it, and once in a while if it's in a place that's an open hollow in the winter, like next to a big log, the mice gnaw through it.