Opened up another kitchen wall and now have a great view of the plumbing that services both of the full baths upstairs. One thing I'm noticing in this house is the large amount of green corrosion on a lot of the copper pipe joints. The house was built in 1980 and has well water with a softening system.

Is this cosmetic or should I be looking at changing these pipes? Should I consider going to pex? Pressure is not too high, the pump is set to cut in at 40 psi and out at 60 psi.





Looks like the last time the previous owner refreshed the hall bath the plumber went to pex with sharkbite fittings to transition to copper.



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Not a plumber by trade but a fierce DIYer

Flux was not cleaned off when installed. Take vinegar and water mixed 50/50 to clean it off but if the erosion is too deep replace with pex.

That's not a Sharkbite coupling that is a John Guest push in coupling. Probably done so to avoid having to solder in that area with so much fiberglass insulation in close proximity.

yep on the flux issue


change the PLASTIC 'john guest' coupling to a compression coupling

metal 'stiffener' and plastic ferrule on the plastic side (yep, pex IS plastic)

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"Measure Twice & Cut Once" - Retired U.A. Local 1 & 638

ditto



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"Measure Twice & Cut Once" - Retired U.A. Local 1 & 638

What's the issue with the John Guest fitting? These are pretty common for icemaker lines and such.

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Not a plumber by trade but a fierce DIYer

just don't want to bury one of those in a wall.

ditto


kinda like asking 'what's the issue with a yugo?'

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"Measure Twice & Cut Once" - Retired U.A. Local 1 & 638

Lorensr wrote:
>Flux was not cleaned off when installed.

When the master plumber (also son of a master plumber) replaced a bunch of copper at my last house, he spent nearly as long cleaning the copper after soldering as before soldering. Everything was very shiny when he was done, barely any solder visible except inside the joints, no residues. Ten years later, everything was uniformly dull copper, no corrosion visible anywhere.