Fixing an underground leak - GIF

[ToolTalkBot]

Fixing an underground leak.




Previously:

Ceiling leak catcher - photo
Detecting water leaks using sound - GIF
Fixing a leaking main pipe - GIF
Frozen leak - GIF
Refinery oil tank leak - GIF
Shipping container leaking wine - GIF

[nova_robotics]

I don't know what to think about those Pro Press fittings. It's a single o-ring seal just like a Shark Bite. I'm sure they're fine enough, but I feel about that the same way I feel about burying a Shark Bite under my concrete. It'll might even last 15-20 years before you have to do it again.

...that said I have reservations about burying copper too. If it's in contact with the soil it should not be metallic pipe. Particularly old houses that grounded their electrical systems to the plumbing. My house was built in 1994 and I had four pin-holes in the copper pipes between 2009 and 2014 when I just got fed up and ripped all the copper out and replaced it with PEX. That was caused by a faulty clothes dryer leaking current to ground through the plumbing system.

[Floradawg]

I do like PEX. My house is plumbed with it. It's very easy to work with.

[nova_robotics]

I do like PEX. My house is plumbed with it. It's very easy to work with.

PEX is spectacular. Easily the best plumbing system. It's dead easy to install, it doesn't require heat, it's very fast to install lowering labour costs, the pipes have lower friction so you can generally go down one size and get the same pressure loss, it's flexible so it can go around turns, it's water hammer tolerant, it's freeze tolerant, it's not conductive and doesn't corrode, and it doesn't care if you have acidic ground water. Plus probably a bunch of other stuff that I'm forgetting. It blows the doors off of copper by every single measure, other than rats and mice can gnaw on it.

PVC is terrible, but plumbers love it because it makes straight lines. I had a plumber argue with me when I was doing over my house about installing PEX, over a job he wasn't even doing.

[Hoosiersmoker]

Plumbing with pex in a traditional, branch type would be great but I hate the manifold systems. With traditional branch type plumbing, in a bathroom at the opposite end of a house from the hot water source, the sink faucet might take a minute to run hot then you have hot water at about the same time in the tub. With the manifold systems I've seen if you just turn on the sink faucet it would still take a minute to run hot but then you have to wait the same time for the tub to run hot. Also, any faucets in between would still need to run until the hit water got to them from the manifold. Seems a waste of extra hot water to fill all those pipes when you can branch off.

[nova_robotics]

Plumbing with pex in a traditional, branch type would be great but I hate the manifold systems.

You don't need to use those manifolds. My house is 95% PEX and it's branch without a single manifold in sight. Someone can have a shower upstairs, and someone can flush the toilet downstairs and the person having a shower won't notice. It works great.

[desbromilow]

I take it the first step of jack-hammering through the wet towel is to stop the chisel point skidding on the concrete? if not that reason - what?

[Floradawg]

Maybe he thought there would be a lot of dust.

[Duke_of_URL]

Bare copper pipes under slab with no sleeves? Bad idea. A neighbor of mine had a noticeable hot water leak under his basement slab, and called out the leak-detection/repair guys to triangulate its location, nailing it within a small dinner plate radius. It turned out to be a pin hole in the buried copper pipe caused by a small piece of aggregate that had made its way into close contact with the pipe through a torn protection sleeve. However, over time with the daily heat/cool, aka expand/contract cycles, the copper work-hardened and eventually failed, as theorized by the repair crew. He sold and moved away before he had to pay to find where his next leak would be found!