PEX plumbing

[Mopar1973Man]

Arrgh...On my last outing I notice water dripping down on the rear corner of the RV. It was leak from up inside near the city water connector. Looking at the plumbing there is a piece of vinyl tubing clamped to the city water fitting and the PEX elbow. So loosen up the clamps to find both are damaged so I might as well replace the tubing too. Gave a firm tug on the city water side and POP! It came off but it broke the PEX elbow. I called the local lumber yard and they have no way of cutting the PEX clamp band. Great! So I hunted around the property to find the Dremel tool I found a small grinding wheel started slowly grinding the band. Well eventually the band got hot and the plastic melted behind it. POP! The elbow came out with minimal loss of tubing! Right On! So now today I'll take a trip to the local lumber yard and get Sharkbite connector, barb, 2 hose clamps, and a piece of new tubing!

[flagmanruss]

I really don't care for the current pex tubing, fittings & clamps. I Don't have much choice as my TT is plumbed with the stuff too. My ancient Scamper 5thwheel was originally plumbed in copper with all flairs. I knew the previous 2 owners. The first of which was quite competant (even if he was ex-bro-in-law). The owner in between claimed he'd never used the camper... neglected to mention that he'd put water in it, not winterized & let it freeze & burst ALL of the piping. I replaced it all with Quest which I had successfully used for years in boats. I did have the bathroom waterline freeze & push the quest fittings apart (when I was living in it in December)... when it thawed during the subsequent day, I got a flood. Putting the piping back together took minutes & never came apart again in the 5 years I used the trailer after that. Quest got a bad name when people put it into walls which could not be serviced. I have some Quest fittings in service going on 10 years in both my houses... in exposed basement locations, & toilet supply lines. I'm looking at installing a winterizing T but am turned off by the smaller passages in commercial T/valves (Camco). I have not tried the shark bite yet.

[Mopar1973Man]

Day got all bottlenecked with getting the Charger loaded up today. It's gone...But tomorrow I'll get to town and get the fittings...

[Mopar1973Man]

I got my parts today but I've have enough of jumping through the rain.

[dripley]

Pex plumbing is not a bad product. The key to it is installing the fittings properly. That means the crimping tool and the person doing the crimping must be in proper codition. If the fittings are installed with a tool with worn out dies or misaaligne dies the connction will fail. And if the installer does not care about what he /she is doing you will have the same problem. That said, the only place I would want it is where it is accesable. My 5th wheel is plumbe with a plastice pipe with compression fittings. Even the accesable parts are hard to work on due to no slack to use the fittings easily.