Back up a second there, old hoss. You said you plumbed a house for
less than the cost of a crimping tool? Say what? Crimpers are just
calibrated pliers - the "expensive" name brand ones have never been
over ~$150.

Hmm... I could have sworn the calibrated crimpers were around $300 at the
time, but my memory isn't as good as it used to be. In any case, even
$150 will buy a LOT of CPVC pipe and fittings.

Would you choose differently six years later? PEX is less expensive,
needs very few fittings, the _complete_ tool set costs about $100, is
easier to repair and modify, can stand up to far more abuse, etc.

Yes, if the pipe and fittings were readily available locally I wouldn't
hesitate to go with PEX. It was a real toss up between PEX and CPVC back
in 2003, and I only opted for CPVC because PEX supplies were hard to find
(and the tools were expensive).

Still, I'm familiar with CPVC and it works well for our situation.

I can run down to the local hardware store in our little town if I need
one extra CPVC fitting on a weekend I forgot to buy for a project (or if
I goofed up the installation and need to redo the work). While I've seen
PEX "pipe" at the home centers (farther away), I haven't really paid
attention whether they have the fittings or not. I'm sure the "real"
plumbing store on the other side of town would probably have them, but
they're not very convenient.

You may be entirely alone on that opinion. Ball valves are far less
troublesome and can lay "dormant" for years without seizing up -
rarely the case with a gate valve.

Yeah, I've heard that many times before, but my results have been
completely opposite. Weird. I have a variety of ball valves (plastic,
and two different styles of brass ball valves) in our system, and they
all tend to "stick". Even the fixture shutoff's (all ball valves) tend to
stick a little, though not as bad as the ones in our 3/4" main lines.

I needed to shut off our main water supply a couple of months ago while
on vacation, and felt like I was going to break the surrounding pipes
trying to close the valve. After 5-10 minutes of fiddling with it I
finally got it to close, and then had a similar struggle to open it again
when we got home. I easily closed the gate valve in our pump house also,
just to be safe.

Another ball valve in our recirculation system is always a struggle to
open and close also.

Kind of disappointing since I bought the best valves I could find in
hopes of preventing problems like that. If the valves were well anchored
to something solid I'm sure the force needed to close them would be a
non-issue, but mine are mounted directly inline on plastic pipe. Live and
learn. That's why I suggested anchoring the valves in my original post.


Anthony