Emergency Plumbing Repairs

This rant was caused by three hours spent crouched in the crawl space last night fixing the latest in a series of plumbing leaks. My legs HURT!

When you pay a "professional", there should be some assurance that the work is done properly, in accordance with code, and manufacturer's recommendations. A pro should know what they are doing.

Adding insult to injury, this work was properly permitted and inspected by the local building inspector.

All of the hot and cold water piping in our house was originally copper with sweat fittings. The plumbing contractor hired to do our addition used PEX with brass fittings. The original copper system was having issues, mostly related to age and erosion from slightly acidic well water, so I took no offense at using PEX. With the correct fittings it should last and offer better freeze protection than copper pipe.

The first issue with the installation was some twist-on Quest compression fittings the "professional" plumbing contractor used to transition from the copper to PEX. The fittings soon failed and appeared to have been way over-tightened. I removed the failed Quest fittings and replaced them with copper-to-PEX adapters that are soldered to the copper pipe (the way it should have been done in the first place). Over the next year, I gradually replaced all of the original copper pipe with PEX myself. I bought an inexpensive manual compression tool to compress the copper rings. It is very slow, but effective.

The PEX that I installed myself serves the kitchen, laundry, and one bathroom. This plumbing work has had zero failures in the last 8-years. Over the same period the "professional" PEX installation for one bathroom in our addition using identical materials has failed in several ways. In every case the failures have been directly related to improper installation. Radius bends were too tight, metal clamps have worn holes in the pipe, fittings have failed at the crimp, and excess heat from soldering ruined the fittings on our water heater. That was fun! A check ball got loose and lodged in the pipe downstream from the water heater. We had plenty of pressure but very little flow at the faucets. The leaks have created other issues with rotting wood, mold, and ruined carpets.

The next time someone urges you to have work done by a professional, pull a Websters off the shelf and hit them over the head with it. "Professional" is an utterly meaningless term when applied to the quality of work performed by contractors or mechanics. Anyone who receives money for service is by definition a "professional".

I have been told that the plumbing contractor should have been brought back to fix the problems free-of-charge. If I'm having problems with workmanship, the last thing I want to do is give the same jackleg another whack at it. Plus, most work by contractors is only guaranteed for one year. Good luck getting anything done for free.