This is Hacker Public Radio episode 3,604 for Thursday, the 26th of May 2022.
Today's show is entitled.
Everything you always wanted to know about PX part, one lets talk about PX introduction.
It is hosted by TREG and is about 13 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag, the summary is, introduction to PX.
Hello and welcome to a new series, everything you always wanted to know about PX.
This is part one, lets talk about PX and introduction.
So why am I recording this?
What's my story?
Well, I'm posting about plumbing on Hacker Public Radio, right?
Well of course, because it's of interest to hackers.
I find it interesting, I consider myself a hacker.
We all like to learn new things, we like to understand how things work, how things break,
how to use non-standard approaches to solve problems.
And others can learn from our experience, our troubleshooting processes, etc.
And also I had fun creating these episodes titles, so I hope you enjoy them as well.
You know, I've listened to folks talk about installing cat doors and many other projects
that were outside the normal technical type of hacker episode that I would normally expect.
And so I thought I would build on that.
The primary reason behind this is because I was dealing with pinhole leaks in my copper pipe
in the plumbing of my house.
Now my plumbing is about 40 years old, it's original to the house and it was installed
using poor quality copper.
Add to that, it had shoddy installation, it was awful.
The person that installed it failed to debur the pipe before they soldered the pipes.
They did not properly hang the copper pipe from the joists.
You had pipe sitting on pipe, you had pipe sitting on steel wire.
Those dissimilar metals and electrolysis can cause corrosion inside and outside of the pipe.
And it was just, it was a mess, the failure to debur causes turbulence inside the pipe,
which can put pressure in one specific section of the pipe, helping to form pinhole leaks
from the inside and bad soldering technique.
I mean, there was just lumpy solder, flux residue, excessive flux that was used, so that also
causes corrosion and deterioration of the pipe itself.
And what the pinhole leaks actually result in is, I mean, literally this tiny, tiny mist
of water spraying out of just a random section of the pipe.
In my case, these started below one of my living spaces and above my garage where the pipes
were behind drywall in the ceiling and I would go to the garage and see water dripping
on the floor and look up and see a section of the drywall that's discolored and saturated.
And I'd start to cut it out and the fiberglass insulation that was in there would be just
saturated with water, water pouring out gallons of water because it had been spraying
for a while and we did not know it.
And we'll get to some of the things that you can do to address that, but that's the problem
that I was trying to solve.
Another reason why we have them is in my part of the United States, we do have hard water.
What is hard water, hard water is water that has a lot of minerals in it and those
can also cause deterioration inside the pipe.
They can build up and they can erode the pipe from the inside out.
Some of my neighbors are experiencing the same issue in their houses, but mainly only the
ones that were built by the same builder as my home.
And as a result, we're starting to tie a lot of this to the building techniques that
were used.
If you want to learn more about copper corrosion, I'm going to include a link to an episode
of this old house on YouTube in the show notes where you can go and they'll talk more
about copper corrosion and how to stop copper corrosion.
One of the final things that can also cause copper corrosion is high water pressure.
So early on, I tested my water pressure and normal water pressure for a residence in the
United States is expected to be between 60 and 80 pounds per square inch.
I was able to go to my local Big Box Supply Store and get a test gauge that I could connect
to one of the hose fittings outside, turn it on and measured consistently at 63 pounds per
square inch.
So it was on the low side of normal.
So high water pressure was not the problem, but we did indeed identify many of the other
causes of the problem.
And it caused damage.
The water leaks, as I mentioned, damage to the drywall in parts of my house, damage items
that were stored near that drywall, damage to my beloved first computer, my TI-994A that
I had in a box on a shelf that the cardboard turned to swish.
So that was very, very frustrating.
I had many, many leaks in some of these areas that were difficult to find and went
undefined, unidentified for a long period of time because of where the water was flowing.
This can also lead to damage, can lead to mold growth and other things like that.
So had to fix the problem.
So what are possible solutions?
Well, short-term solutions are obviously patched the leak, right?
You want to get the leak resolved as soon as you can.
You can do this with a variety of different methods.
One is epoxy kits where you can actually put an epoxy base to tape or an epoxy based
paste, sometimes an epoxy soaked string or other tape that you wrap around the tape over
and over and over again to kind of not let that water out.
These can be inconsistent.
Oftentimes they may not bond to a corrected tape and more often than that they require
you to turn off the water and dry the pipes possibly even clean the pipes before you perform
that.
But there's an option and it works for a lot of people.
Another option is water-activated tape and this is tape that uses something similar to
the adhesive you would find in a gorilla glue where it's activated by moisture.
And again, these are on a tape you need access to the pipe where you're leaking.
You would want to wrap it around that particular section.
But again, it's inconsistent.
It may not bond to corroded pipe, you need to make sure your pipe is clean.
Some of them may not bond if the pipe is, if there's pressure in the pipe and the water
is trying to spray out, you may be required to turn off the water and dry the pipes as well.
Another option is a solder-on patch.
Now these are more expensive.
They do require clean dry pipe-experient exterior so you have to turn off the water.
You have to drain the pipe.
So there's no moisture, there's no water inside the pipe that would inhibit your ability
to solder on that patch where you're using a torch and flames and heating up the pipe
and melting the solder and all of that.
But it's a possibility.
The solder-on patches can work, but if you're going to go to that extent, it's really
better to cut out that section of copper and put in a replacement section and solder that
in place if you're going to be doing that type of soldering.
Another option is repair clamps and I like repair clamps.
They're fast.
They can be applied in minutes, oftentimes with just a wrench or a ratchet.
They're strong.
They can hold back a lot of pressure and they can really work in situations where a lot
of other things may not.
They can be used while the pipe is under pressure, while the water is turned on, while
it's spraying out there, which is a really good time to do it for a pinhole leak because
you can get some visibility as to where it's spraying out.
Sometimes you have to shine a light at an odd angle to catch just where that water is
misting out and then line that up with the pad of the repair clamp.
I'm including several examples of repair clamps from different suppliers in the show notes.
You can see some of what I'm talking about.
They're designed for specific size pipes, but they work really well.
When you need minimal clearance, you need enough clearance to get the clamp in place and
to get a wrench in there, but they work for a lot of different situations.
The repair clamps is what I chose to use in the short term.
I ended up having about 10 pinhole leaks at different times over the course of about six
months.
So I was having to put them in quite frequently as I planned the process of replacing all
the plumbing in my home.
That brings us to long term solutions, which require replacing the plumbing in your home.
One of the long term solutions is repair the copper, cutting out the damage section and replacing
it.
You can replace it by soldering it in or you can replace it by using things like shark
bite fittings.
Shark bite is a brand and you shark bite allows you to press that onto the pipe and it
makes a good seal assuming that your pipe is round, assuming that the outside of the pipe
is clean, it'll make a decent seal and then you can connect additional copper pipe with
that or you can solder it in place.
Sattering is more time-consuming.
If you have many areas where this corrosion is visible, you may want to cut out larger sections
of the copper pipe and replace those.
But in a situation like mine where you have multiple areas where corrosion is visible and
you have multiple times where pinhole leaks have been happening, it's a situation of
whack-a-mall.
What are you going to repair next when it's the next leak going to occur and then you're
going to be doing the whole thing again, shutting off the water, draining the pipes, replacing
a section, soldering it in place, charging the pipes again, crossing your fingers, hoping
for the resting.
Well, another option is to skip that and replace all of the copper that's in the house
with all new copper.
That's expensive and it's time-consuming and it's difficult and you know, copper comes
in these long straight sections and it may not be easy to get to certain places where
that copper needs to be.
So you know having a process in place for doing that can be challenging, can be time-consuming,
can be difficult and very expensive, copper is extremely expensive right now.
So new copper is not really an option in most situations and it's going to deteriorate.
If you have some of the same things that cause it to begin with, whether it's water pressure,
whether it's improper installation, you want to make sure you're installing it right
so that you don't cause the same issues, whether it's hard water that's contributing
to it, you may just be postponing the problem for however long until it happens again.
Another option is PVC.
This can still be difficult because PVC tends to be a somewhat rigid product.
So you're having to put in elbows and other things like that if you're going to be replacing
all of the copper in your house, all of the copper piping in your house with PVC.
The last option is what we're going to be talking about this series PX.
It's PEX Papa Echo X Ray and in the next part, we'll talk about what that actually stands
for, but PEX is available in many of your home improvement stores in the United States
and around the world.
It comparatively inexpensive compared to PVC and copper, it's extremely inexpensive compared
to copper.
It's flexible, it's easy to install and you can use the existing copper pipe as a support
structure to kind of guide it if you choose to.
Another option when you're installing it is you can completely redesign your plumbing.
And instead of following the existing plumbing and doing the same things that were there,
you can install more of a central manifold which is a bank of valves and allow you to isolate
certain areas of the house, turn on or off water in specific areas of the house, while
water in other areas of the house remains on, allowing you to better troubleshoot issues
as they happen and making your installation.
If your installation is taking a period of time, if you're doing it yourself, allowing
you to do that over a period of time without having to have all the water in your house
shut off for an extended period of time.
So this is the end of part one.
Let's talk about PEX.
In part two, we will experience the joy of PEX.
Thank you for listening.
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