Saturday, August 13, 2011

Should I replace my polybutylene pipes?

My house and (presumably) the pipes are 25 years old, I've been in it for 4. I recently had a pipe fail by the water heater, but it split sideways, and in the section that was removed for the repair there is no sign of interior corrosion. We did however find that water was entering the house at over 100 psi, the rating for pb, which has been addressed. Could that have been the cause for the failure? Most conventional wisdom is to replace pb but most of said wisdom is provided by repipe folks. Around here some people replace it but it's still in tons of houses. Also, since the crawlspace insulation has been removed due to all the water that came out the split pipe, will we save money doing it before the insulation is replaced? We need to replace it soon before it gets cold. Has it served out a reasonable lifetime anyway? Does anyone know of an unbiased/scientific source of pb repipe info?

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