“Although Polybutylene piping may last up to 30 years, many polybutylene plumbing systems fail in as early as ten years.”
This house where I am, quite a bit of the plumbing is passing SEVENTY years old. And sure, it has required alteration and maintenance. But the only part that I can think of ever having failed was the kitchen sink drain. And that is to be expected as they get wrecked by food residue. But ff sake, drains are NOT under pressure.
Imagine the same house, had plastic water pipes been a thing all along. The water, probably a hot-water line first, would certainly have been expected to “fail,” that is burst and flood the house and need replacing, by as early as the mid 1980s. But even with that hopeful 30-year service lifecycle, the system would have been expected to need replacing, AGAIN, by ten years ago or so. Which service would have been precipitated by another plumbing-failure water spectacular.
But that assumes that you get 30 years out of a plastic pipe. I see 25-year warranties, and my mind goes back to the phrase, “many polybutylene plumbing systems fail in as early as ten years.” Who in their right mind wants to rip out and replace all the plumbing in their home every 30 or 20 or 10 years. It’s madness.
And I suspect the madness, like so much plastic-pushing, is because we use so much oil, so much more than we did a decade or two or three ago, that we have to do something with the horrible waste sludge that comes from oil processing, that can be stabilized and made safe by making it into more and more and more plastic.
In the mean time, if you are designing a home with pressurized plastic water pipes, maybe put all of that behind easy-access panels, cause that shit is gonna need frequent replacing… ideally with copper.
