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-MIKE-

On 4/12/12 12:40 PM, wrote:
On Thu, 12 Apr 2012 09:50:37 -0500, wrote:

On 4/12/2012 9:44 AM, -MIKE- wrote:
Absolutely in some areas, to the point that it can not be used. Although
as soon as some of these old farts on jurisdiction's zoning and building
standards boards retire, that should be subject to change.

Tru dat. Most resistance to new, better technology comes from old school
technophobes often entrenched in a corrupt system protecting their
fellow old schoolers and the technology they profit the most from. If
you can sit on a house for 3 days, sweating copper and charging like
it's rocket surgery, why would you switch to Pex and only get a 1/2
day's labor, then have to go find another client?

+1
Makes a lot of sense when you quote the job on a contract basis
instead of time and materials. Contractor is used to, say, $3500 to
plumb the house in copper, so he's REAL happy to pay $2500 to have it
done in PEX - while $1400 would still be making the plumber money.

Except that a good General Contractor isn't an idiot and keeps track of
the prevailing labor rates and costs of materials and know what a job
should cost. Free market would drive that other plumber out of business
real quick when the $1400 guy starts getting all the work. Hence, his
other old school buddy down on the local code board.

But in MY opinion, a house plumbed with copper just looks so much
NEATER, and more professional than the "spiderwebs" of PEX that I see
in a lot of new houses. Nothing requires PEX to be run in straight
lines with neat 90 degree bends - so the "cheap" plumber just runs the
crap in the shortest, easiest route, looks be damned.

Boooo! Bad answer, you sound like an old guy. :-)
There are lazy, sloppy plumbers who do shoddy work with whatever
material they are working with. I've seen some ugly ass copper piping
with big balls of solder stuck all over the joints and all kinds of
extraneous elbows and crap with bad decisions in where to run the lines
where the lines are in the way of everything that comes later, pipes too
close to the outside of studs and plates. And I've seen great copper
jobs.... the kind that belongs in instruction books.

In my experience, the guys who care about their work, care about it when
they did copper and they care about it after moving to Pex. Why run Pex
in straight run with 90 degree bends if you don't have to? If it's not
in the way and it makes sense, why do it it based on the same physical
restrictions as copper? If it's neater to do it that way and works out
better, then do it. But don't do it just because "that's the way we did
copper."

I've seen some beautiful Pex runs from manifolds and nothing was messy
and you could trace every line. It's the plumber, not the plumbing.

--

-MIKE-

"Playing is not something I do at night, it's my function in life"
--Elvin Jones (1927-2004)
--
http://mikedrums.com

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