Originally Posted by mjcoleman

well i have to say you're not an old grouch. all the points made are valid, lucid, and spot on. if you think about it 50 years ago the homeowner had 2 choices white for fixtures and chrome for faucets. and the sam walton mentality had not caught on yet. yeah if you are a large corporation and have buying power you get a great break on inventory there by cutting our throats, thanks again big box america. and im not a big fan of sharkbites, my wholesaler sold a homeowner thousands of dollars of shark fittings and pipe so he could pipe his whole house. which i could have piped it for the same or just a little more with a conventional tried and true method. i got real pissed that my wholesaler would help w/ the cutting just so they could make a buck. all of the owners and all of the guys working for someone how much do we spend annually w/ wholesalers. who really has the buying power. i think kohler, delta, moen and thier ilk would rethink the big box break if all of the nations plumbers startes a unionized buying program. and boycotting materials until the playing field gets leveled.

Originally Posted by NH Master

Originally Posted by Herk

Everybody knows that plumbers are too expensive.

And that's part of the problem.

We're on the defensive when we walk in the door.


We are individuals that do high hazard work, for high hazard pay. Not every job, but quite a bit follows the nasty.

Most of the faucets I sell are "budget" models. People refuse to pay $120 or more for a faucet. And I have a clear memory that when I first started in business a good faucet only cost $20.


I don't have this problem, and most of the faucets that customers supply me are over $100 most times. Rarely do I have the cheaper versions.

I'm more than willing to make copper repairs in copper. I'm also more than willing to charge about four times as much as if I were making the repair with PEX. It's a no-brainer which I'll be using.


I know for a fact that in Idaho the ground is very acidic, that's whay galvanized years ago was used for that very reason.

I don't live there so I can't vouch for the "common" piping materials in that state. Given financial restraints that you hear from your customers, why would you charge 4 times as much in a PEX repair?

If the water and the ground is acidic in Idaho, why are plumbers even tempting fate, knowing the piping material will not hold up? Remember, that's a geographical problem, not the piping to blame.

If it isn't geographical, why is Illinois and Cincinnati, New York having no issues whatsoever with copper piping systems stretching 80 years and still continuing on? They are going to be breaking 100 year statistics...soon.



Isn't cast iron great? Yes, it is. It's still spec'd for hospitals, large skyscrapers, large commercial, Industrial, even some residential. It is outliving its installers completely in some cases.

Older schools with these types of systems prove that point.

No, not really. It must last better in some areas than it does here. I've replaced 30-year-old TySeal all the way through a house that you could stick your hand through at any point in its length. It's Iron ore, baked mud with a variety of metals. 30 years is a significant life of a product. I know you know this, but there are different "grades" of cast iron and the heaviest grade was hardly ever used in residential, EVER. So you deal with the thinner gauge that won't see the 25-40-70 year time spans that show proof of this time span in the buildings that are erect, standing with this piping material still in use.

That heavy grade cast is always found in the fittings used in cast iron, always. The fittings are the last thing to fail, it's always a 1/4" thick. Back in the day the majority of my cast iron replacements, it was always the horizontals that would split the tops and verticals that caught water closets on down would cancer themselves out completely. From that receiving tee up to the roof? Good shape, leave it in, it's got another 40 years of life most times.



I've recently seen copper installed to code that was only a few years old with several pinholes. I have no idea why it failed. I know that someone can post something about PEX that failed, but I've never seen it. My own house is plumbed with polybutylene and I have never had one single problem with the plumbing. Not one.

Now you and I have discussed before, and you know that "what's in my back yard" doesn't hold a flame to the entire United States and the prophecy that something "doesn't" happen if it doesn't happen here.

Why is copper installed in your area if ph levels are as such that it attacks the piping? Why is your code allowing this piping choice if the water treatment plants are KNOWINGLY sending out ph levels that in time, will destroy copper?

Why are you refusing to accept the failures of BLUE-MAX, KITEC, PB, ZURN...the surprise of Rehau PEX piping shutting down all production of their pipe making in the United States?

Why are you NOT believing me that I constantly remove PEX risers that start to fail around 8-11 years in Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana and copper not showing one sign of failure, in the same application?

I've never, ever have removed one chrome copper riser that was pinholed. They always leaked at the compression ferrule, but I've never seen one over time pinhole or "Abruptly rupture" and I'm going to give explanation to that two worded demon outside this quoted text when I'm done.


You get high marks for having one house that has PB with no failures, but you can't possibly ignore the billions of dollars of property damage claims, insurance premiums raised, untold millions of people that were affected by this piping and the undo hardships it placed on people that probably lost more than a plastic pipe in the wall.

Do you have family that was blungeoned by the hardships of this piping? Those who "missed" the class action lawsuit and had to pay thousands to correct it?

As to AAVs - there are places where they'd be really nice. I was up in Jackson Wyoming talking to some plumbers many years ago who were quite happy with plumbing entire houses with only one stack and no vents anywhere else. No inspections, no permits, no inspectors. One stack in the middle of the house.


AAV's are a one way valve, with no design to allow air to reverse or "equalize" a plumbing system which is a give and take scenario, constantly in a correctly installed DWV system. No two ways around that statement.

Becoming a plumber in my state, then parading across the internet tuned me in real quick of how some states lack good enforcement, and some supercede the state I reside in. I don't agree with some codes in my state as I do with some in others. KY follows MAXIMUM demand, not minimum demand requirements when figuring DFU loads.


Now, if there were a good plumbing code that was enforced, and I mean enforced, all across this great nation, we might see some good plumbing systems. Don't hold your breath. We don't all live in Chicago, and we don't all do commercial.

What code is Chicago? NPC? IPC, UPC? In KY, every drain must have a vent, period. Some ridicule this application but I don't believe in airplane plumbing or connect-the-dot piping systems. This allows the fixture with its own separate vent to function properly while other fixtures that are malfunctioning, to keep from affecting the other.

I remember an Ohio inspector telling me once that the reason they didn't vent fixtures there in commercial is because "that way when it gurgles you know to clean it." WHAT?!?!?!? Could not believe what I was hearing.


Do you suppose those guys who string hoses around in restaurants for Pepsi or Coke are saying, "Gee, I really miss the days when we did all this in galvanized."

They are not plumbers, I don't know why you used this analogy to make a statement like this.

If I installed a galvanized piping system in my home today, we already know that it will last significantly, years in this matter. A very long long time. It takes years for those lines to close up, leak at the threads. That's why they are always found in homes that were built in the 40's-50's-60's...and guess what? There's a lot of that piping still in use.

Want an example? House I worked in today, built in 1920. I don't know when that galvanized water service was installed from the street to the house, up to that main shutoff, but it's still supplying water to this home.

Why am I still working on plumbing systems that still have this piping system, effectively working inside the structure in 2009, and to predicate that statement, do you know how many more years to come that piping will STILL be effectively delivering water inside homes? Businesses?

We use what we must, and we try to be as good at installing it as we can. After all, we aren't the ones making the decisions regarding materials anymore. The politicos have taken over the code making from the old plumbers. No more lead pipe. No more galvanized pipe. No more buggy whips. We move on or we become obsolete ourselves.

No, we ARE making the decisions, as individuals to choose what products we put in our hands, use them day to day in our work lives. I can't blame no one but myself when I put a product in a customer's home that's going to have a history of failure, or possible failure in a short time. I simply won't do that, and that's a choice made by the person who makes that decision from the word go.

Plenty of lead water services still serving water supplies without failure....and that will be true to that statement long after we are out of this profession. Some of that stuff shows absolutely no signs of wear, some of it was 5/8" thick and the only weak points was where it connected. Aside from that, I've worked on buildings that have them without problems. It's resilient to ground and water.

Galvanized pipe at one time was all they had to work with. Of course, given the day and age of systems, no one from a cost perspective will hand cut and thread a water piping system, ever again. The use of threaded 3/8" brass, if it wasn't so expensive, was one of the most superior products to ever hit the plumbing profession. Take any brass product, throw in into the ground for 100 years, dig it up, clean it and reinstall it and it will go another 100 years.