I have 2 houses. My 1st house, built in 1986, had polybutylene plumbing. The entire neighborhood had problems with leaks, some houses with disastrous consequences when the owner was away. I had 3 pinhole leaks. We all had to replumb with copper. Many of us were fortunate to do it early enough under the claim against a fund set aside by the class action lawsuit against the pipe maker. That billion-dollar fund probably has been exhausted.
My 2nd home built just 4 years ago has polyethylene pipe. This is good stuff. My neighbor forgot to turn the central heat on, and his house was frozen. With copper, the entire plumbing would be gone. Here, when things thawed out, it was like nothing ever happened. Amazing! Though the pipe may be elastic, one would think the elbow and tee joints would be severely stressed and cracked, but they survived. Well, some time later, he discovered a leak behind the shower valve, but that turned out to be the valve itself but not the PEX pipe.
I originally cringed when I heard about PEX, but this is polyethylene, not polybutylene.
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"Old age is the most unexpected of all things that can happen to a man" -- Leon Trotsky
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