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Posted by David Sherman [216.18.131.217] on Friday, December 11, 2009 at 13:13:25 :
In Reply to: Re: Aluminum Pipe? posted by Desoto61 [138.163.0.43] on Friday, December 11, 2009 at 09:41:34 :
Nice theory about aluminum oxide, but we've all seen lots of aluminum stuff with powdery white warts all over it from where it's corroded. It's one thing if it's anodized and the coating is intact, but ordinary bare aluminum never does well in a moist environment. There is a type of aluminum tubing I've seen advertised for those in-slab heating coils which has plastic inside and out with aluminum sandwiched in the middle. They claim it's the best of both worlds -- as corrosion-proof as plastic, but easy to bend and hold its shape like soft-drawn copper, and cheaper then copper.
What I find with all the many new plumbing systems out there is that they really sock it to you on the price of the fittings. The pipe itself is reasonable, but they make it up on the fittings. There are two kinds of crimp-on pex, and at least two completely different kinds of slip-on no-tool fittings that will work for copper or pex, and all of them are available in either brass or plastic. They're convenient, but unless you're paying union scale to a Chicago plumber, I don't see now the time savings can make up for the much higher cost. Obviously for long runs, the lower cost pipe has a bigger advantage, but start adding a bunch of elbows to jog the pipe neatly around beams and other pipes, and the cost goes up fast. Plus, the pex fittings take just as long to crimp on as sweating copper tubing in most cases, and if you mess up, they're much harder to get apart without buggering up the fitting, and you're out the cost of the crimp rings, which aren't cheap either. The push-in fittings solve this problem, but instead of being 5X the price of sweat fittings, they're 10X.
I do think that when I get to re-plumbing my big building for apartments upstairs, I will do it all with PEX because it will be easier to fish the tubing through the old walls, and it won't break if it freezes.
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