[Wolynge]

yes I knew that, but it still degrades with some chemicals..and some systems can become acidic..like if you dont change your antifreeze in your truck, it becomes highly corrosive and you end up blowing head gaskets and other issues....just look at how many plumbing items get invented and then taken off the market when they start to fail, im not saying propress will be one of them..for me it makes no sense to use...if I was doing big commercial work and large mains then I would have to figure out the cost difference and see which one is more profitable...in the end that is one of the final things that determine the use of a certain system or not..
I used an edpm liner for a koi pond, its tuff stuff and after 20 years it still held up, but NO chemicals were in the water...

I say to use whatever materials you're comfortable with. Edpm has alot of resistance to various chemicals. Its pretty good stuff overall. Ive done some work doing industrial plastics where they run some nasty chemicals through it and engineers spec it. Theyvgo over their choices and critique everything. Propress has been good there.

Personally I'm comfortable running propress all day long. That being said it's still essential to know how to solder at my co. There are times where its still needed.

 

[GAN]

I predict down the line 10 or 15 years many of these sharkbite and propress joints will start to have issue when that little O ring that makes the seal starts to dry up and rot, or be effected by both chemical from the water or enviroment they are in...time will tell, no lab can make up for real time testing out in an uncontrolled environment...solder joints( properly done) have been proven to last as long as the pipe in most cases...tell me of any propress thats over 20 years old????

It's called job security or planned obsolescence take your pick. Kinda like the polybutylene recall and the gray PVC furnace venting (CPSC) back in the later 90's.

 

[ShtRnsdownhill]

It's called job security or planned obsolescence take your pick. Kinda like the polybutylene recall and the gray PVC furnace venting (CPSC) back in the later 90's.

the problem with that on waterlines is when they go it can cost you untold amounts of $$ to put your house or building back together..its not like a drill broke and you go buy a new one and your good to go again..

 

[Nazareth]

To be fair, if the argument is chemicals in water, especially acids, zinc, which makes up most of the minerals in solder, can leach and deteriorate pretty rapidly. Nothing withstands pressurized water indefinitely, especially acidic water.

Solder is not perfect. Even if the joint is done 100% perfectly, if the conditions of the water are wrong, it'll die quickly.

Its always fun to play devil's advocate, but we all need to admit that everything we've ever installed or repaired is a ticking time bomb to fail. Granted, you obviously want to install what is going to last the longest, but who can really say?

No one.

All I know is what I've seen, and what is factual without speculation. No one here knows how long a press fitting will last. No one knows how long a solder fitting will last. Sure, you can choose to dance with the devil you know rather than the devil you don't know, but you already dance with the devil you don't know on a daily basis.

How do you know all those Kohler, Moen, and Delta shower valves you've installed aren't going to just explode, and be the next big issue?

You don't.

How do you know the new LF variants of fittings are adhering properly to the solder, and are going to last as long as the fittings put in thirty years ago?

You don't.

How do you know you've been choosing the "correct" brand of angle stops, and they won't Jeffery Epstein themselves one night?

You don't.

Just press the dam thing and be done with it.

 

[Wolynge]

the problem with that on waterlines is when they go it can cost you untold amounts of $$ to put your house or building back together..its not like a drill broke and you go buy a new one and your good to go again..

I'd agree about that with new materials. Which is why it's hard to try out new ways of doing things.

At least if you had a propress fitting failure you could still cut out further down and solder an adapter on if that were the case but I believe that press has proven to be reliable enough to be trusted in most applications.

Remember when the switch to lead free fittings was forced in 2013? Alot of people had trouble adopting to that new transition. I remember Nibco giving us valves to "practice" with. That you could unthread the one end and change it to try and solder a new end.

 

[Wolynge]

To be fair, if the argument is chemicals in water, especially acids, zinc, which makes up most of the minerals in solder, can leach and deteriorate pretty rapidly. Nothing withstands pressurized water indefinitely, especially acidic water.

Solder is not perfect. Even if the joint is done 100% perfectly, if the conditions of the water are wrong, it'll die quickly.

Its always fun to play devil's advocate, but we all need to admit that everything we've ever installed or repaired is a ticking time bomb to fail. Granted, you obviously want to install what is going to last the longest, but who can really say?

No one.

All I know is what I've seen, and what is factual without speculation. No one here knows how long a press fitting will last. No one knows how long a solder fitting will last. Sure, you can choose to dance with the devil you know rather than the devil you don't know, but you already dance with the devil you don't know on a daily basis.

How do you know all those Kohler, Moen, and Delta shower valves you've installed aren't going to just explode, and be the next big issue?

You don't.

How do you know the new LF variants of fittings are adhering properly to the solder, and are going to last as long as the fittings put in thirty years ago?

You don't.

How do you know you've been choosing the "correct" brand of angle stops, and they won't decide to blow off one night?

You don't.

Just press the dam thing and be done with it.

Amen

 

[skoronesa]

..........

They exist.

In all reality, I absolutely see why people are hesitant. What baffles me, is typically the people that hate on propress also install pex. I'm yet to see a press fitting fail. I see pex fail frequently.

Press fitting o-rings, the standard ones, not viton, don't handle acidic water well. The worst was a 16 tee 3" XLC boiler manifold, 5 years old. 1600$ in fittings had to be replaced because one of them failed at the o-ring and there wasn't enough length between them.

What pex do you see fail? Fail how?

Here's pics from a 6 year old propress install with slightly acidic water. All the solder joints were fine.

 

[Wolynge]

Press fitting o-rings, the standard ones, not viton, don't handle acidic water well. The worst was a 16 tee 3" XLC boiler manifold, 5 years old. 1600$ in fittings had to be replaced because one of them failed at the o-ring and there wasn't enough length between them.

What pex do you see fail? Fail how?

Here's pics from a 6 year old propress install with slightly acidic water. All the solder joints were fine.
View attachment 127911 View attachment 127912 View attachment 127913 View attachment 127914

I think Nibco recently had a settlement for pex piping and fittings I think it was specifically about the clamps though more than the pex itself.

As for the press leaking, I've seen many solder fittings look just as bad. I'd probably say if your waters that acidic the focus should be more on selling water treatment than what type of copper piping system you're using.

 

[skoronesa]

I think Nibco recently had a settlement for pex piping and fittings I think it was specifically about the clamps though more than the pex itself.

As for the press leaking, I've seen many solder fittings look just as bad. I'd probably say if your waters that acidic the focus should be more on selling water treatment than what type of copper piping system you're using.

This house is 60 years old, never had any issues on the original soldered copper, it does just fine with light acidity, specifically the sulfates in our water here. The propress orings however don't like it. I've seen this on dozens of houses. We wait until the pp fitting gets worse than that, unless it's in a spot where it can cause damage. This is in an unfinished basement in plain view so they opted to leave it for now.

Why would the customer be okay with a 1-2k$ neutralizer when we could just solder instead of propress?

 

[Wolynge]

This house is 60 years old, never had any issues on the original soldered copper, it does just fine with light acidity, specifically the sulfates in our water here. The propress orings however don't like it. I've seen this on dozens of houses. We wait until the pp fitting gets worse than that, unless it's in a spot where it can cause damage. This is in an unfinished basement in plain view so they opted to leave it for now.

Why would the customer be okay with a 1-2k$ neutralizer when we could just solder instead of propress?

Interseting have you ever tested the PH in any of those cases? Acidic water will corrode sweat fittings as well. Do you get a lot of pinholes in the area?

 

[skoronesa]

Interseting have you ever tested the PH in any of those cases? Acidic water will corrode sweat fittings as well. Do you get a lot of pinholes in the area?

We've tested most of our customer's water. I said the water was SLIGHTLY acidic. It's not just a matter of straight PH. Different acids do different things. The content of the water is also important. Around here there are lots of houses with slightly acidic water containing sulfur compounds. The soldered copper does just fine for decades. The propress doesn't handle it well.

Of course when it gets really acidic it will pinhole the copper. In the middle of these two issues is just green staining at fixtures from the copper sulfate being formed.

Here's some tips

You know it's the water being acidic if the pinholes are on the incoming cold while the rest of the house has been okay. That incoming line takes the brunt of it.

They have acidic compounds AND lots of lime if you get symptoms primarily after the water heater. The lime comes out in the heater leaving the outgoing water more acidic. Lime makes water basic.

And then you have the poor souls who have very acidic water with tons of lime and iron sediment and sand. Those poor bastards all live in one valley and I have seen people cry over their wells and the trouble they have. I know a couple who drilled their 300', 6" casing well another 600' and still only got 1.5gpm. With no room for storage tanks they hoped drilling a completely new 8" casing well on the opposite corner of the property would yield better results. 300' down they got less than 1gpm. Then they drilled another 300' and hydrofracked. Still very little. Finally they drilled to 1000', hydrofracked again and built and addition with a crawlspace to house three 300 gallon storage tanks. The well pump has a 3gpm restrictor and when family is up it runs constantly. Did I mention all the water treatment equipment they have? Lucky for them the septic hasn't said a peep in decades lolz

 

[Wolynge]

We've tested most of our customer's water. I said the water was SLIGHTLY acidic. It's not just a matter of straight PH. Different acids do different things. The content of the water is also important. Around here there are lots of houses with slightly acidic water containing sulfur compounds. The soldered copper does just fine for decades. The propress doesn't handle it well.

Of course when it gets really acidic it will pinhole the copper. In the middle of these two issues is just green staining at fixtures from the copper sulfate being formed.

Here's some tips

You know it's the water being acidic if the pinholes are on the incoming cold while the rest of the house has been okay. That incoming line takes the brunt of it.

They have acidic compounds AND lots of lime if you get symptoms primarily after the water heater. The lime comes out in the heater leaving the outgoing water more acidic. Lime makes water basic.

And then you have the poor souls who have very acidic water with tons of lime and iron sediment and sand. Those poor bastards all live in one valley and I have seen people cry over their wells and the trouble they have. I know a couple who drilled their 300', 6" casing well another 600' and still only got 1.5gpm. With no room for storage tanks they hoped drilling a completely new 8" casing well on the opposite corner of the property would yield better results. 300' down they got less than 1gpm. Then they drilled another 300' and hydrofracked. Still very little. Finally they drilled to 1000', hydrofracked again and built and addition with a crawlspace to house three 300 gallon storage tanks. The well pump has a 3gpm restrictor and when family is up it runs constantly. Did I mention all the water treatment equipment they have? Lucky for them the septic hasn't said a peep in decades lolz

Very interesting, if I were you I'd cut out a fitting and send it out to viega next time to see about their warranty. It's supposed to have a 50 year on fittings. Maybe that's something they'd look into further.

It would be interesting to see what types of acids you get from a lab test. Edpm seem to handle acids in general pretty well. If you get a lot of sulfates with bacterias that feed on them, are you getting alot of smells? Most people in my market want water treatment when theres something funky going on.

We've got a problematic commercial building (retirement home) it's probably around 40 years old and they have non-stop pinholes. They almost always seem to be on hot water recirculation loops, probably from the velocity of the water. They also get a lot of erroision. The thing that sucks with that joint is none of the valves ever wanna work. I recently got unbelievably lucky after shutting a 3" gate valve off that didnt want to open back up again .

 

[Debo22]

Remember when the switch to lead free fittings was forced in 2013? Alot of people had trouble adopting to that new transition. I remember Nibco giving us valves to "practice" with. That you could unthread the one end and change it to try and solder a new end.

I use tinning flux on lead free brass valves to copper sweat joints and regular flux on copper to copper.

 

[skoronesa]

I use tinning flux on lead free brass valves to copper sweat joints and regular flux on copper to copper.

I use tinning flux on everything. If I want regular flux I wipe the top of the jar where the powdered solder's separated out.

 

[Debo22]

I use tinning flux on everything. If I want regular flux I wipe the top of the jar where the powdered solder's separated out.

Tinning flux doesn’t seem to smear and coat as well as regular flux is why I only use it as needed on lead free brass and Uponor to copper adapters.

 

[Debo22]

Excited to join and network with other professionals from around the world. My back story is that my whole family was always in some sort of trade. Initially I almost wanted to do electric like my brother, but got into plumbing and found that I enjoyed it.

I did my apprenticeship at a small company and gained alot of experience working directly with the owner who was a excellent guy to learn from. I got my journeyman year completed and went to pursue other opportunities. Eventually I went on to get my master plumbers license in NJ and start my own company.

Now I'm 8 years in the industry. Today most of my time is spent doing service work, drain cleaning and repairs. I also love to install boilers. Occasionally I'll do custom homes but I much more prefer service work.

Sorry your intro thread has been hijacked but when it does it means you had a good one

 

[Wolynge]

Sorry your intro thread has been hijacked but when it does it means you had a good one

It's alright anytime you get a group of good plumbers together they end up talking about materials and workmanship lol

 

[skoronesa]

Tinning flux doesn’t seem to smear and coat as well as regular flux is why I only use it as needed on lead free brass and Uponor to copper adapters.

What kind are you using? I get rectumseal 95/5, schmears on my bagels just fine. It has a brush built in and when it breaks off the lid you can drill a hole and stick a new brush through.

 

[Debo22]

What kind are you using? I get rectumseal 95/5, schmears on my bagels just fine. It has a brush built in and when it breaks off the lid you can drill a hole and stick a new brush through.


View attachment 127950

I have to get it at Home Depot. Ferguson doesn’t carry it.

 

[ShtRnsdownhill]

I'd agree about that with new materials. Which is why it's hard to try out new ways of doing things.

At least if you had a propress fitting failure you could still cut out further down and solder an adapter on if that were the case but I believe that press has proven to be reliable enough to be trusted in most applications.

Remember when the switch to lead free fittings was forced in 2013? Alot of people had trouble adopting to that new transition. I remember Nibco giving us valves to "practice" with. That you could unthread the one end and change it to try and solder a new end.

there have been posts here showing half a dozen propress tees in a row with 1 in the middle leaking, but not enough pipe between to cut just 1 tee out and replace, so quite a few hundreds of $$$ fittings later , where a soldered t could be taken out and cleaned and put back in...I cant count the amount of times I had to spin a fitting to change angle..I dont think you can do that with pro press..so more waste material..Im sure it has its place..but not with me at this time..ill stick with pex and solder joints..