Grunff,
Thanks for a very comprehensive and helpful reply. You have restored my
faith in this newsgroup.
Dave

"Grunff" wrote in message
...
David wrote:

Thanks to those who gave positive and helpful responses. Sadly, no
thanks to
those who tried to start a flame war. As a new comer to this newsgroup I
was
disappointed to see that such happenings, which often kill off
newsgroups,
are prevalent here.

Don't be too hard on IMM - he may be a troll, but he's *our*
troll. He keeps other trolls away, and his responses/flame wars
are so predictable they're like an old pair of slippers.


I still don't really understand the pros and cons of plastic over copper
piping.

Plastic pros:
# Can go round bends easily. This can cut down on the number of
joins hugely.
# Won't burst when it freezes.

Copper pros:
# Cheap
# Proven techology
# Looks better


How do you join it and is it easier to join and repair than copper and
are
the joints more trust worthy over time or not?

It's important not to confuse the advantages of plastic pipe
with the advantages of pushfit connectors. Pushfit can be used
on both plastic and copper pipe. But plastic pipe can only be
joined using either pushfit or compression, whereas copper can
also be soldered.

Most plastic installations will use pushfit. A lot of modern
copper installations also use pushfit. Pushfit's advantages are
that it's much quicker than soldering, and can be done by less
skilled labour.

There's a large range of pushfit connectors avialable; plastic
bodied, steel bodied and copper bodied. They all make use of
rubber O rings for the seal. It is the life of this rubber O
ring which is the main source of concern over the longevity of
pushfit connectors.

Most reasonable people think that the life will be such that it
won't matter - most houses get replumbed periodically anyway.
About 30-40 years seems to be a reasonable assumption.



I guess an advantage would be that it might absorb acoustic noise better

Not really an issue.


The deterioration of copper over time is well known but what about
plastic
carrying hot water over, say, 20 years. Better or worse or as I suspect
not
proven.

Not proven is the answer. But given how well LDPE lasts carrying
mains water burried in soil (I dug up some 30 year old LDPE in
very good condition a couple of years ago), I don't believe this
is likely to be a problem.

Does that answer your questions?

--
Grunff