Pin Hole Leaks in Pex?

[MBfreak]

I lived and worked in a mining company compund in Liberia . We had our own "city" built around a iron ore plant and export harbour. A housing area with 200 houses and full plumbing and potable water installations. Soil was 3 " of dirt and below that untold feet of sand. In 1979 we replaced most of the cast iron 8 " cast iron potable water backbone network piping with PEX, due to corrosion. Buried at around 3 feet.
After the first rain season with enormous lightning strikes we had many 1/4" holes in the PEX. Explanation was lightning strikes that found the best earth potential. This was the water in the PEX and lightning energy burned nice round holes thru the PEX, which had around 3/8" wall thickness.
Installed earting wires on both sides of the PEX, problem solved .

Ola

 

[doug.j]

Some red and blue PexB (flexible type/expanding type) has been recalled due to pipe failures. PexA (stiff type/crimp) has had problems with some type of connectors. All of it is susceptible to high chlorine as far as I know. The white PexA and PebB with better connectors is still commonly used. I've seen copper fail enough to know that it is not without risk either. Just google your type of pipe and class action and you'll see there's plenty of problems. IMO, the only logical thing to do is to build so that pipes can be serviced without busting up concrete or destroying the entire inside of the house.

 

[Sumboodie]

The resident grammar princess has been found.

Nope. Just educating the ignorant. I'd appreciate if that was reciprocated as well if I'm incorrect.

 

[qmdv]

Retired plumber here. A competitor of mine (very good guy and very good plumber) did a house in copper about 30 years ago. Within two years it was full of pin holes. Slight amount of Sulphur in the water. Pex was not yet approved so he redid the whole thing in CPVC. No problem. Never in my life have I heard of pin holes in pex. There have been problems with the connecting fittings and some law suits. In fact my insurance company asked if I ever used a certain brand pex (forgot what brand). I had not and they said they would not cover me if I had.

 

[Norcal]

PEX is easy to work with but because of rodents I refuse to use it except for temporary use. I had a big problem with them & the cats were too lazy so it took trapping for a while, got rid of the last of the 1943 galvanized plumbing & finished it out with copper.

 

[rayra]

There was an old class action suit years ago against the piping they were using prior to pex. Iirc it was a polybutyle pipe. I know that used to get pinholes. This is the first I've heard of the problem with pex.

I had exactly this problem a few months ago, 24yr-old house I bought 18mos ago.
I had thought it was PEX, distribution manifold in the laundry room.
The main had been run in the garage attic and an intermediate owner had hacked a hole in the garage ceiling and used the space for some storage. And plopped some plywood atop a line, pinching it between ceiling joist and plywood.
I stepped out into the garage into a relatively small puddle. Just happened to discover the problem in the first hour or so.

Tried to patch in some new PEX, but huh, the PEX crimp coupler, then the sharkbite coupler leaked on the old stuff side. Finally learned that it was the old butyl stuff AND that sharkbite made a specialty coupler, gray for butyl on one side. Worked like a charm.
Replacind the entire main run is on the short list this Fall / Winter. It's vegas, way too damned hot in the hot tub right now.

The winning Sharkbite looks like this, gray ring on one side copper color ring on the other.

 

[jetnow1]

My sister bought a house that thieves had broken in and stripped the basement copper. We repiped the house in Pex, including the heat system. Only problem was a year later a rat chewed threw one heat line trying to get from the basement to the first floor. I had to run a foot of copper from every radiator down to transition
to the pex to prevent this. Yes we used the proper rated pex for the heat,

 

[dougf]

I’ve seen it first hand. Had a house built, two months in I happened to be under there running wire for router add saw a pinhole spraying water up onto my subfloor. No idea how long it was occurring, immediately turned water off and had it fixed. Put a fan in the subfloor and luckily no damage. Plumber blamed the spray foam guy. Who knows.