This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,634 for Thursday 7 July 2022.
Today's show is entitled, everything you always wanted to know about PX Park PX and the
single install.
It is hosted by Tray and is about 28 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag, the summary is, my PX installation experience part 2.
Hello and welcome to everything you always wanted to know about PX Park PX in the single
installer.
This is the second part of my installation experience.
I have learned from my plumbing project and working with PX now, if you are wondering
what in the world is he talking about, what is PX?
You need to go back and listen to the previous episodes.
What have I learned?
Well first comes to the actual pulling of the PX itself.
Getting it guided to where you want it to be.
This can be much like pulling thick wire.
You can go through walls, you can go over top of ceilings, other things like that.
Much more easily than you can with solid rigid sections of pipe, whether they be pop,
copper or PVC or fill in the blank there.
So there are a lot of different ways that you can guide that through.
My method, I often would use a fish tape that you would use for pulling wire to pull through
a bit of Mason's line.
And again, this is because I was working on the project myself.
Most of the things that I was doing I was doing myself without assistance.
So I would use a fish tape to pull through some heavy duty Mason's line.
You can get that at any home improvement store.
Then I would tie the Mason's line to the section of PX that I wanted to pull through.
And I would tie it about four inches from the end.
Tie it as tight as I could.
Then I would take electrical tape and I would wrap it above and below that section.
And I would tie it again closer to the end of the PX and then I would wrap the whole thing
again with electrical tape.
So you have the strength of the tape, the strength of the knots pulling against the tape.
And then I would use the Mason's line to be able to pull that through.
Now again, if you're doing this by yourself, it can be challenging.
You may have to go back to where the PX is and feed some more through and go back to the
end where you're pulling it and pull some until you can't pull anymore and then
have to tie that off and go back to where the PX is and feed more in, that's part of why
I used the Mason's line because I could tie it off somewhere and keep a little bit of pressure
on it.
Make sure you pull a little bit extra.
PX is not that expensive, so if you're pulling a section and you think you're going
to need a foot to connect to that connector once it gets through the whole pull two feet.
Pull three feet.
It's not that expensive.
You can use the extra pieces for all sorts of things.
In fact, a little bit of a bonus.
One of the things that I like to do is that those little two, three, four inch sections
of PX that are cut off for various different things.
It's easy to put a screw through those and fasten them to your bench or fasten them to
shelf or something.
Now you have a thing that you can put a pencil in.
You can store a pencil or a screwdriver or a heavy so I've adapted some of my bench-top tool
racks to be able to use some small sections of PX to be able to hold tiny screwdrivers
and other things like that.
So there's lots of things you can do with the extra.
Pull some extra through.
It's better to do that and have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
Also the other thing I learned about pulling it, um, unroll enough PX for you to do what
you're going to be doing in the next, uh, next a little bit and let it lay straight
for 24 hours.
If you've got room in your house or wherever you're working, let it lay straight for 24
hours so that the curve memory that it has developed from being rolled up goes away.
Now if you're working with straighter sections of PX, you know, a 10-foot section or what
have you that you buy at your home improvement store instead of a roll, this may not
be a problem.
But lay it out for a little while so it can straighten out that we don't have curves
that are fighting you as you're trying to pull it through.
Next comes supporting the PX.
Now like I mentioned, you can pull it over top of ceilings and other things like that.
But it is important that the PX be supported and the the plumbing codes are different
in all different places, but make sure you know what your plumbing codes are.
For most of the United States, what I've seen is a requirement for on a horizontal
section of one inch PX or smaller, it to be supported every 32 inches at least.
Now this can be done with a variety of different things.
I followed a lot of the copper pipe that I had in my house, I was able to zip tie it right
to the old sections of copper pipe and have it supported very frequently.
You can get hangers that will nail into a joist or nail into a wall or screw into a wall
other things like that to support it.
So that's for horizontal support.
Now when the pipe is running vertically, it must be supported at every floor.
So at the floor and at the ceiling and then midway between floors as well.
Roughly every four to six feet, depending on how big your stories are.
And I'm including a link for some references to some of the codes that I referenced
while I was working on that, you'll be able to find that in the show notes.
It can be challenging to hold the PX in place while you're more permanently securing it.
So zip ties are your friend.
You can often zip tie it to places or use string and tie it in place until you can properly anchor
it.
Having the PX is important, remember it's fairly lightweight, but it's going to be heavier
when it has water in it.
So be aware of that.
Next we want to talk a little bit about using a manifold.
We discussed manifolds in a previous episode and manifolds are a way of almost having
like a breaker box for your water.
Now it's not going to automatically turn off the water if there's a problem, but it does
let you manually turn on or off water to specific sections of your home based on what
you need.
So again, if you have a toilet tank explode and there's water going all over the place
and you grab the valve at the bottom and you try to turn it off and the valve breaks
off in your hand, you can go down and turn off the section of the manifold that controls
that particular section of the house as opposed to having to turn off the entire house.
Now that may seem like an absurd thing it does happen, but that's just one example
to give you a visual of it.
So you can use a manifold to be able to control water in certain sections of the house.
The thing I liked most about the manifold was by putting that in, I was able to quickly
get water to the areas that I needed the most very quickly while I was still working on
the rest of the project.
So for example, once it got to the point where I'd pulled all the packs and I'd finally cut
the waterline and was connecting the main line, I already had that already connected to
my manifold and that was ready to go.
So I was able to do a lot of the things before I actually cut into the water main, shut
off the water first, then cut into the water main and connected from there.
But then I could work on connecting one bathroom and get that put in and get the valve
for that from the manifold turned on so that I could get water in one bathroom.
So, you know, family in the house could use the bathroom and then I could work on getting
water to, you know, one sink so that people could wash their hands and stuff.
I could work on getting water to the kitchen, you know, what have you get things done
in the order that we needed based on priority so that the inconvenience of me working on
all this by myself was limited for the rest of the family.
So you really need to determine what your needs are when you're using a manifold.
For instance, keep in mind how many hot water and cold water outputs you're going to
need.
Most manifolds have a hot water side and a cold water side and you can determine what
you're going to need where most places will require more cold water outputs than they
will require hot water outputs simply because you might have outside taps that only
require cold water.
Also figure out what type of valve type you need.
Do you need a handle valve that you can just walk up to the manifold and turn it off?
Or do you want something that's going to require a key or a wrench so that it can't
be turned off by somebody who's wanting to play a practical joke?
Of course, then if there's an emergency, make sure that you can find that tool that's
required to turn off the particular section of the manifold.
So there's pros and cons all of those.
Determine what your needs are and pick what works best for your needs.
Also find a location that's going to work with your manifold.
Make sure you have easy access to it.
Make sure it's fairly central so you can avoid long delays for hot water.
And we'll talk about that here in just a second because that's actually let's talk about
it now.
That can be one of the interesting concerns when you're putting in a manifold.
When you have a normal plumbing set up and you have water coming off of the hot water tank
that's going to different places, it may go to a sink and then there may be a T there
and it may continue on to a different sink and then it may continue on to a shower and
then it may continue on to a kitchen and then it may continue on to another shower.
And you may have all these things in a row.
Well, the things that are being used are keeping hot water in sections of that pipe.
So when you turn on the thing that's the furthest away, sometimes if other areas are being
used, you've used it in the sink or you've used it somewhere else, you're not going
to have to wait as long for the hot water to get all the way there because other things
that are regularly used in the home can keep certain sections of that filled with hot water.
But when you have a manifold any particular section is going to have to go from the manifold
all the way to where that is. So like in my case, the kitchen is the furthest run there
and it can take a little bit of while for the hot water to get from the manifold all the way
to the kitchen sink. So just be aware that you may be changing some of those lengths
and your time that you may have to wait for hot water could increase or decrease and position
your manifold accordingly. Also, make sure that your manifold is positioned somewhere where
it's going to have limited or no light exposure. We talked about light exposure in a previous
episode and the fact that ultraviolet light can and will degrade your packs.
Sunlight is the biggest danger, but you'll also get ultraviolet from LED lights and from fluorescent
lights. These will not degrade the packs as rapidly as sunlight will, but they will degrade it.
So make sure that you keep it in a location where it can be protected from light or cover all of
those packs sections with something that will keep them from being exposed to the light. Now
I will tell you that when I installed mine, I was not thinking about the ultraviolet light
that would come off from the LED lights in that part of my garage when I was installing it.
And I realized afterwards as I was working on this particular presentation that I needed to fix that.
So now I'm having to cover all of those sections of pipe. They're really pretty. I have Bluetooth
blue pecs for the cold water side and red pecs for the hot water side and it's all bundled
neatly and everything. Now I have to go back and cover those and I'm using foam insulation
to cover them just because it's easy. You can get foam pipe sleeves that have a slit down the side.
You slide them over there and they just they they magically work. But I'm having to cover all of
those to protect them from the LED lights. So that has some fairly bright LED lights in there
to make my working area easier to do. So when you're figuring out where you want to position
your manifold make sure that you have limited light exposure or that you cover the packs
after after you've installed it to limit the light exposure. Then you need to think am I going to
build a manifold or am I going to buy a manifold? There are a lot of manifold products out there
that you can purchase. You can you can just Google for them at your local home improvement store.
But with the cost of some of the valves and the cost of the pecs itself, it's very easy to just
build a manifold. In fact, you can you can build them quite easily and for almost the same cost
as you would it would be to buy one. So you know think about the appearance, think about the consistency,
think about the time involved, think about the materials that are involved and then make a decision
on what makes more sense to you to build it or to buy it. In my case, I just purchased one.
And then for the manifold, you also have to figure out how you're going to secure it in place.
You do have to anchor it securely. If you're using a block wall, you'll want to use screws with wall
anchors. If you're anchoring it to wood, you want to make sure you can be on something secure like a
joist. But oftentimes your manifold is not going to be wide enough to hit more than one joist.
So you may want to do a section of wood, two by four or one by two or other things like that
to go across that you can anchor to the joists and then anchor your manifold to that section of wood.
Do not anchor a manifold to drywall. I saw several warnings about this. They're given the weight
and some of the movements that you can get with the manifold and the water starting and stopping.
It's just it's not a good idea to even try to anchor it to drywall. Don't do it. I anchor it to wood
and then use that wood to span your joists and anchor it securely to the joists.
Sometimes you may also want to insulate it from the wall. In my case, I have the manifold
up against a concrete block wall that can get cold in the wintertime.
So I chose to anchor it to some wood that was stood off a little bit from the block wall
and then anchor the wood to the block wall and then I put insulation between there as well.
So I have insulation and I have dead air separating the manifold and the packs from the wall
so that there's less likelihood of it freezing. So finally, you've got your manifold in.
You've got your pipes run. You've got all your connections done. You need to connect it to the
main line. Well, you have to make some decisions. Are you going to replace? What are you going to
replace and what are you going to use? Where are you going to connect it? If I'm replacing it,
I want to replace as much as I possibly can. So I went back right to the regulator valve.
So I was replacing as much of the existing pipe as possible. Limit the risks involved in the old
pipe that was remaining. Also remember that size matters for most residential
locations. You're going to be dealing with three quarter inch packs and half inch packs. Well,
that main line. You want to be the three quarter inch packs. Sometimes you may even have a
one inch pack for your main line. You want it to be as large as you can get it for your for your
needs in order to ensure that you have maximum water flow there. So you'll have more flow
with a larger diameter pipe and less flow with a smaller diameter pipe. So make sure you match it
up consistently with what was there. Usually it'll be three quarter inch coming in from the main
water line that will come to a valve that will then split off to the cold water in line on your
water heater and then that will continue to your manifold and then from there you'll do
half inch lines coming off the manifold. If you're not doing that, you may continue a three quarter
line for a certain amount of the time to certain devices in your home and have a T that comes
off of that that'll take it down to a half inch line for those devices and eventually then taper it
down to a half inch line so you're keeping the pressure consistent. But make sure that you plan
accordingly and use the right size lines. Next we'll talk about connecting it to your water heater.
You need to figure out where and how you're going to connect it. If you're using a manifold,
I ran that main three quarter inch water line to just above the manifold. I put a valve there
that I could shut off the water above the manifold. Different than my other main water shut-off
line that was on the other side of the garage. So I have a shut-off valve that's right there that's
close by. I put in a T ran a three quarter inch line from that T to the cold water input
on my water tank and then another three quarter inch line coming off the hot water
output of the water tank going back to the hot water side of the manifold. Now I put a valve
there as well going between the going right before the cold water goes into the water tank.
So I can turn off the water tank without turning off all the cold water in the house in case
I have to do maintenance on the tank in case I want to purge the tank other things like that.
But you want to consider how you're going to connect to the water heater. Keeping in mind that
oftentimes they will not want you to code will not let you connect the pecs which can be
heat sensitive to close to the water tank itself. So you need to check your code and see what's
there but you want to protect it from heat. Protect it from being too close to the water tank
itself. Protect it from possibly a gas event that's coming off the top of the
of the water heater if it happens to be a gas water heater where that hot air is coming off and you
have a hot metal pipe that's venting those exhaust gases out. You want to make sure that it's not too
close to there as well. You may put insulation on it to shield it or route it in such a way that
it's not close to there. If you choose to connect directly to the water heater that's fine.
You can thread in an adapter that will match the threads on the water heater and that you can then
crimp your pecs directly too. I was always taught you connect water heaters with pipe unions.
A pipe union is something that you can connect on both sides and then have a sleeve that's threaded
on so you do not have to turn the pipe on either side to connect it. So I connected mine with
short sections of pipe and pipe unions. But once I got it all connected I realized that really
all I needed was a short section of pipe and then I could go directly to the pecs and if I ever
redo that I'll probably just take the pipe unions out because they can be more of a headache than they're
worth. Given that you can oftentimes move the threaded connections that you have within pecs
and they'll they'll move around within the sleeve without damaging the pecs itself. That's one
thing or given how inexpensive pecs is you can cut out a section if you need to replace the water
heater and then just crimp in a new replacement as needed. So the need for pipe unions is much
much less. Again make sure you have a shutoff valve on the cold water side. It is not recommended
to have a shutoff valve on both sides of your water heater because of the expansion that water
does when it's heated you can have some dangerous things there. So you put the shutoff valve
on the cold water side and you let the hot water side continue out. One other thing that maybe
needed in some areas is an expansion tank on the top of your water heater. Oftentimes certain
states certain countries may have codes that require that expansion tank to be on the hot water
tank right above where the hot water comes out. So you might want to double check your codes
if you're redoing connections and your code requires an expansion tank. Now's a good time to put that
in there. And the use of silicone tape or pipe dope here on any threaded connections is going to
really help prevent leaks and allow you to have really good solid connections.
Finally connecting to your endpoints. You know keep in mind what you want to keep and what you
want to replace. Make sure you have your transition connectors. We talked about those in a previous
episode you might use shark bite to connect to existing pipe. You might use solder. You might use threaded
connections. You might use glue if it's PVC. It really depends on what you have. Sometimes you may
go all the way through and replace even the the shutoff valves that might be under your sink or
under your toilets and replace all of that or you might try to use some of that. It's really up to you
but plan that and make your connections accordingly. Also think about your exterior host taps. If
you've got outside connections for like a hose for washing your car or watering plants or would
have you figure out how you want to connect to those. Do you want to reuse some of those and just
cut the pipe on the inside and connect to it or do you want to replace it? In my case I chose to replace
it because the connections I had were not frost-free or anti-siphon and the codes right now require
those to be frost-free and anti-siphon connections. So I was able to get new hose taps with a pipe
that went all the way through the block and was able to put those in. Anchor them on the outside so
they were secure. Anchor them on the inside. Here is the time when having help can be handy because
you know working on both sides of a wall at the same time as an individual in solar can be very
difficult and you have to plan accordingly. I had some challenges around there just going back and
forth and back and forth and anchoring. One side securely then coming on to the other side and
trying to thread something on and not being as secure as I thought it was going to be so
help is better when you're working on those exterior hose taps. Great. Now comes the time you've
got everything connected and already to go and you're going to start turning things on. If you're
using a manifold turn on one section of time and I usually recommend turning it on from the bottom
up so that water can float down in and then you can be able to push bubbles out and other things
like that. Open up the sink valves in your home that are on the other side of the manifold or if you're
not using a manifold it's still open up all the sink valves and then ease on the main valve
a little bit at a time let water start to flow so it's not under pressure it's just flowing
through the packs flowing through the manifold if you're using it it's occupying the space it's
pushing out some bubbles and then you're finally getting water that's starting to come out
different different valves in different areas and sinks or tubs or what have you and you can
start to have water flowing through and you can check all of your areas for leaks then increase the
flow. Now again if you're doing it with a manifold you're doing one section at a time so you only
have to check one piece at a time. If you did not use a manifold and just replaced your existing
plumbing then you're going to have to be checking the full line each time and then slowly increase
that flow increase the flow you still have all the taps on and water's flowing you finally have
the main feed valve on all the way so water's flowing at the maximum rate and you check for leaks
when you don't start to see any leaks start slowly turning off your sink taps one at a time
so pressure starts to build in that pipe you don't want to turn it off hard so you have that
thump of pressure coming back through the pipes initially when you're checking for leaks turn
off slowly and watch for leaks turn off the next one slowly turn off the next one slowly
keep an eye out for leaks again this is a section where having a partner can help a lot because
you know you can have them on a cell phone in my case I did have a partner for this and I had a
cell phone in an earbud in place and I was under part of my house checking for leaks as I had
had the other individual turning the water on and in that case I did have a leak and I had to say
it's up turn off turn off turn off and go and repair that solder joint that I did a really poor
job of and then have them retry so that we did not have any leaks now let's pause there
because we're talking about repairing a solder joint this this is not in my script and just
to be aware that you know I had pecks going to a connector that I had soldered onto a section
of copper pipe well now that copper pipe was leaking around the solder joint I could not
heat up that copper pipe to resolder that while the pecks was connected it would melt the pecks
so make sure when you're pulling these sections of pecks that you have extra pipe in this
case I had to cut that pecks close to where that was I had to then cut off the crimp ring
and remove the the small section of pecks that had been crimped on there and let the copper pipe
drain then I could heat it up with my torch and resolder it and get it good and make sure I have
a good connection there then wait for it to cool and then reconnect the pecks and re crimp it so
just just be aware of some of those challenges if you have to reheat something afterwards because
pecks and the temperatures that you're using with a torch are not compatible all right afterwards
you've got it all done what do you want to do make sure you cover any pecks that's exposed to light we
talked about that earlier it's going to be exposed to LED light fluorescent light sunlight make sure
that it's covered so that it's not going to deteriorate over time watch for leaks repair any holes
that you've made in drywall or other things like that to get the project done run your water daily
to flush out a bad taste pecks can leave a little bit of a bad taste in the lines for the first
several weeks to a month so in my case I turned first thing in the morning I would go down to my kitchen
and I would turn on the hot water for a period of time and this would purge the main water line
where it was coming in from the mains to the hot water tank and it would it would flood that out
now I didn't care about having bad tasting water in my hot water tank because I don't drink
the water from the hot water tank I don't cook with the water from the hot water tank so I didn't
care about that so I would run that until I had hot water going all the way to my kitchen on the
longest run so I ensured that I had water purged out through that main line then I would turn
on the cold water and I would let that run for a period of time because I have a refrigerator that
has a water feed in there I wanted to make sure that that line was purged at least once a day
at the beginning twice a day maybe three times a day to get the the water that was sitting
in the packs absorbing the nasty tastes from being something that we were drinking in fact we
ended up drinking bottled water for several weeks until that was all worked out but I continue to
flush that on a regular basis you may want to do that as well to reduce the the bad taste you
have in the water also you may have to have an inspection again depending on what the codes are
in your area you may have to have a licensed inspector or a licensed plumber come in inspect your
plumbing job and ensure that it that's okay and and certify that it's okay that is the end
of everything you always wanted to know about packs if you liked it leave a comment if you didn't
like it I don't want to hear your comment no you you can leave a comment as well this is not again
the typical type of thing that we would hear on hacker public radio but I thought it would be
interest of interest to some hackers and so I recorded it I hope that you've enjoyed it I hope
that you've learned something and have a fantastic day you have been listening to hacker public radio
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