Last year I laid out new PEX A pipes throughout my crawlspace not because I have pipe failure, but because the pipes I have are polybutylene has been banned for years and is being excluded for insurance coverage. I did the PEX but because of all the other projects I never connected the PEX to the existing risers & manifolds.

I knew about the class action lawsuit against Uponor for it's colored red/blue tubing. But I was under the impression that the white tubing is good, and they have the newer white tubing with red/blue lettering so that's what I went with.

This is the class action on the color coded Uponor aquaPEX.

[www.classaction.org]

but a few days ago I came across this video on youtube by someone who claims even the white tubings are problematic but with a different issue altogether. He claims the inside of the tubing is chemically affected by the chlorine in the water.

[www.youtube.com]

Anyone know about this? Some claimed this guy is a Zurn salesman who is out to discredit Uponor with disinformation. I can't tell the difference between information and disinformation.

In fact if you search for class action lawsuits, just about every manufacturer is being sued by someone.

[www.classaction.org]

so confusing!

I'm with you on this....this has gone through several iterations of what is "good" pex vs. "bad" pex that I'm totally confused also. Reminds me of the aluminum wiring issues in the 1970's, there were many explanations of failures blamed on sizing, connection types, device ratings, etc., etc., until it was finally banned from residential service with the exception of large-gauge service entrance cables. In the end there were so many caveats on how aluminum wire needed to be installed and with what devices, that the probability of the average tradesman installing it correctly was so low that the risks outweighed the cost benefits.

I'm beginning to feel that we are getting to the same point with pex...what was a very good idea is proving too difficult to manufacture and install with reliable consistency. One thing about copper, if you can solder it correctly you are 99.9% of the time good to go. If it doesn't leak when you turn the water on, the odds are very low that it will ever leak. Yes I know there are cases of pinhole leaks forming in copper, but much less frequently than with pex.

Sum, if you watch this video, the same guy is saying that he used to install Uponor pex A exclusively and has re-piped over 32,000 homes with it. Here is showing a Uponor pex failure that from a repipe that he did 7 years ago. Now that he is getting callbacks on his Uponor stuff he has moved on to Zurn pex B. I wouldn't say that this is disinformation so much as one guy reporting his own results.

[www.youtube.com]

Here's another video from Mr. Repipe extolling the virtues of Zurn pex B over Uponor pex A and Viega pex B.

[www.youtube.com]

Aluminium wiring, even if installed correctly the fist time and provides good service with that installation, will prove troublesome when working with it subsequently. If bent a few times it breaks and that can be an issue if it breaks where the cable enters the box. If the box is filled with multiple cables and there is little spare space, then it is difficult to transition to copper pigtails.

Unless local code states otherwise, the NEC still allows aluminum wiring as small as #12. It's in Article 310.

Yes, I am just so confused with all these defects and lawsuits with different manufacturers seemingly all over.

I replaced the PB pipes I have not because it leaks, it's been working since 1992. I read that back then the problem with PB was the connection methods, plastic connections bad, brass or copper connections OK. I have copper fittings on mine with copper crimps. But I had to replace them all because my home insurance is prohibitively expensive because of the presence of PB piping, and it doesn't even make sense because they are charging me significantly more due to the presence of PB pipe...that part I understand...BUT get this, they are excluding any water damage liability because I have PB pipes. In other words, sir, you have PB pipes, so we are raising your premium by $8000 a year because it's an accident waiting to happen, and also, if you do have water damage in your house, like may be a supply hose suddenly burst open and flooded a room, we will not cover one penny of it because well, you have PB pipes even though this scenerio has nothing to do with PB pipe whatsover.

So in order to bring insurance premium back down I need to repipe. After doing all the research I decided on PEX, then went through looking at PEX A PEX B PEX C pipes, and various connection methods cold expansion, crimp rings, cinch rings, sharkbites, crawled through underneath to get the pipes installed and laid out...and now I find that may be the new pipes are possibly not any better than my old pipes.

The easy answer is copper, except when it's not....we had radon mitigation done and part of the process is sealing the crawlspace floor with 30 mil plastic taped around a suction port that sucks radon out of the subsoil and exhausts it outside. When I re-modeled the kitchen and had to move the sink, I went with pex and sharkbite fittings because I didn't want to solder in the crawl....one too-hot drop of solder and the plastic vapor barrier ignites and I'm laying in a pizza oven. If the crawl floor was dirt I would have 100% done that move better in copper.

And in that case Sum, Pex may not be any better than PB but if it lowers your premiums and gets you coverage for water damage that alone is worth doing it for.