I have seen a lot of polybutylene piping in my 15 years of performing home inspections in Charlotte North Carolina. Polybutylene piping is a grey piping that was used primarily in the 80's and up to the mid 90's. It is a form of plastic pipe that was used to replace the more expensive copper piping used previously. There were two basic problems with polybutylene. The first was the first generation polybutylene piping that had polybutylene fitting and elbows. This pipe is the type you see on the right in the picture. Well these fittings and elbows would fail under pressure and this is a supply line and you can just imagine the results. Well they fixed that problem by adding copper fittings and elbows. These pipes were much better. The problem now was the pipes becoming bridle if the water was chlorinated like it is in most municipalities. The chlorine would make the pipes bridle and they would fail. There are some other problems associated with polybutylene too. An example is that they can't be exposed to sunlight very long. A lot of the piping rode in the back of the truck in direct sunlight on its way to being installed. This too would contribute to the pipes failing. For more information on polybutylene pipes go to http://www.homeinspectioncarolina.com.
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Preston Sandlin
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