questions about pex

[JohnEd]

Cody,

I think you are off on the wrong foot and complicating the water purge procedure.  I have only one air input to the system and that is at the fresh water IN pipe and the air fill stem is left connected.  When I need to purge the system I connect a 40 psi regulated source to my water after turning off the main valve.  I then go to each spigot/faucet and turn on the cold valve till I get air.  I then do the same with the hot.  I repeat at every outlet and then the manifold.  I go back and repeat as many times as is needed to get air at the purge start every time.  I take apart NOTHING but only use the sink valves.  After draining the main tank I push air thru the line going to the tank in the same manner.  The tank is what I drain first and I it is draining while I do the line purges.

It would be nice if all the lines had a natural slope to allow passive draining but alas....


Hope all is well with you Cody.

John

[cody]

All the plumbing in the Skanee house is in a relatively small area but set up like a spyder with the lines going in different directions, each time I tryed to blow out the lines somewhere there was a pocket of water left and I ended up with a busted pipe, I had a plumber come out and blow out the lines the last time and guess what, a busted pipe at a small pocket of water.  I'm just tired of the hassles of closing up the house for the winter cause I can't winter out there anymore and haven't for a while.  None of the lines are very long with the longest being probably 15 ft or so, most of them, like the bathroom and laundry room, are easily within 8 ft of the manifold, what I want to do is unhook the lines and leave them unhooked from the manifold after blowing the water out of them, what I've been doing in the past is chasing water around the system by blowing it out of other areas, thats why I'm doing a complete rethink of the system.  I've had drains all over the crawlspace and I always ended up with a broken pipe somewhere.  Another thing I've got to do is come up with a good way of draining the dishwasher and washing machine, what I do now is actually remove them and take them outside and disconnect the pump and all the lines and drain out the lines then bring them into town and tuck them away in a heated basement.  I don't leave any heat in the skanee house in the winters, so we remove anything that might freeze, can goods etc, everything.

[JohnEd]

Cody,

I had second thoughts about my post but I thought others might benefit.  I suspected you had been driven to your planned method and procedure.  I also had to repeatedly go from one to the other many times till I no longer got water.  I also found that I needed to have a large air supply to blow all the water up some of the pipes and out the spigot.  Really need to configure all the plumbing to gravity drain....not just the sewer, at the installation phase.

My dishwasher has a chamber in the very bottom that fills and retains water and is the input to the pump.  I suspect that if I poured anti freeze in the dishwasher it would freeze proof the dishwasher......what do you think?  Brief energize on the drain circle to get the pump circulated.  Would be easy to flush it all out.  That would work with my washer if I coupled my drain out let pipe to my inlet cold and hot to circulate the antifreeze mix thru the pipes and pump.

Me,again

[cody]

John, thats pretty much what the plumber did, used household antifreeze to winterize the dishwasher and washing machine after blowing out all the water he could get, I tasted that antifreeze for much of the next summer, looking for a quicker easier way than removing them and physically opening them up to drain them.

[JohnEd]

AMAZING that the taste would persist for that long.  Simply amazing!  But then my surprise doesn't change much.  Really timely info for some I imagine.

The RV stores sell a RV water system antifreeze that is supposed to have no flavonoids in it and completely flushes for safety.  Sales men lie to consumers and I don't have any first hand experience, however.

Your removing the washer and dishwasher annually blew me away.  I hope there is an alternative for you and I realize that the winters in your area art brutal.  Straight alcohol used to be the only antifreeze you could find for a car.  How much is isopropyl  100% and can that be safely purged/rinsed?  You could use "shine" if you could find a way to recover that coveted liquid.  Spit balling here one last time.

Good luck with this,

John

[belfert]

I don't really think RV and household antifreeze are any different.  All of the plumbing antifreeze I see in stores is RV antifreeze.  I have known plenty of caretakers and the like who use RV antifreeze for winterizing plumbing in seasonal use buildings.

[cody]

I think that rv antifreeze and household stuff are the same.  I could tell it was there tho, we've got ice cold well water, our well water comes up at 46 degrees and it's absolutely pure so it took a long time for it to taste the same to me.

[gumpy]

Cody,

I have about 600 Durapex fittings that I'll make you (or anyone else) a good deal on. When Menard's changed their fittings to the ones they have now that cost $5-$6 each,
I bought 1000 of these at a good discount to do my bus and several others (many said they want them, few came through  )  Anyway, they are 1/2" pex with the crimp ring
similar to the previous photo. They are female adapter, which means they can be screwed onto a copper male adapter if you build your own manifold. They can be taken apart. It's
difficult to get the ring off, but not impossible. I have some spare rings, too.

Anyway, if you are interested, I can fix you up with as many as you want for about $1.60 each.   If you just want to try a few, I'll send some up, no charge. Just send me your address.

You can see them in photos on my website, I think.  Look for the fresh water system page....

craig

[cody]

Craig, I appreciate the offer but I have a 300 foot roll of the 3/4 inch pex now lol, I figure to do it all in 3/4 inch stuff.  The best deal was on the 300 ft roll so I got one.

[Fred Mc]

I've had experience with pex and sharkbite as well as pex and copper freezing in the winter.

We have a 1900's house that we remodeled for our daughter. We replumbed it all with pex. It has no basement, only a crawl space so plumbing was a bit of a "challenge". Most of the plumbing is in the walls but water still has to get from the well into the house so a short distance of pex is exposed to the cold. We applied heat tape to this section but the  tape failed and the section of pex froze. It did not split and when thawed out was fine. I read an article where a whole house under construction in Minnesota had pex and froze with no leaks whatsoever. Pex is NOT gauranteed to not split but it doesn't split.

The pex fittings are cheap but you need a special tool to use it. Kinda like a big vicegrips which compresses the ring to effect a seal. The only way to get it apart is to cut the ring off with a hacksaw. Not easy.

I had the opportunity to use sharkbit fittings yesterday to replace a section of old copper pipe in my house which developed a leak.. Part of the problem with old copper pipe is it is hard to solder due to residual water in the pipe and because it is old and worn i.e. thinner- also hard to cut clean with a tubing cutter. But with sharkbite you simply cut the pipe(I had to use a hacksaw rather than a tubing cutter), clean off the burrs and push on a sharkbite fitting. The beauty of sharkbite is you can connect copper to pex as well as to plastic. In this case I replaced a two foot section of copper with pex. Once I got the copper tube cut with the hacksaw it took about 2 minutes to complete the repair. The "problem" with sharkbit is the price. Whereas a copper fitting costs about 75 cents a pex fitting costs about 1.50 and a sharkbit fitting costs  $10. So its a little expensive to do a whole house.

If I was going to replumb anything I would buy the pex tool and use pex fittings EXCEPT where it was difficult to use the tool. In that case I would use sharkbite. I would also keep a small emergency kit  consisting of a few sharkbite fittings for when there are any failures/modifications. This can also apply to those with copper plumbing.

As far as draining, pex is so easy to use I would build in drains rather than take any fitting apart.

p.s. I bought my sahrkbite and pex stuff from Home Depot.

Good luck

Fred Mc.

[cody]

The way I originally set up the skanee house, all the plumbing is easy to get at in and in a relatively small area, with no second floor connections, the water line comes in from the well, it's buried about 6ft deep and straight up under the house where the pressure tank is located, the tank is directly under the bathroom and the laundry room is right off the bathroom with the kitchen directly off the bathroom on the other side, all the fixtures are within 15 ft or less from the pressure tank so it's not a major job nor is it an expensive one to do, even with the sharkbite fittings if I can locate stores that handle them.

[Busted Knuckle]

The way I originally set up the skanee house, all the plumbing is easy to get at in and in a relatively small area, with no second floor connections, the water line comes in from the well, it's buried about 6ft deep and straight up under the house where the pressure tank is located, the tank is directly under the bathroom and the laundry room is right off the bathroom with the kitchen directly off the bathroom on the other side, all the fixtures are within 15 ft or less from the pressure tank so it's not a major job nor is it an expensive one to do, even with the sharkbite fittings if I can locate stores that handle them.

Boy are ever in luck! Come on down, yer favorite Union City Lowes has them!
  BK