Discussion: Plumbing

Gotta love the pex plumbing -- so much easier than sweating lead-free solder on copper pipe.

Yep, I have no skills in sweating copper, even though I seen it done and know how it's done. I had all my galvanized removed last summer and replaced with pex.
This was just an added part they didn't finish.

Never sweated a pipe using lead-free solder that didn't leak on the first try and then had to drain, dry and do it again. The pros make it look easy, but I'll do pex every time now.

Even the pros have trouble with that 'lead-free' solder. I caught my plumber using leaded solder to sweat copper...followed by a light coat of 'lead-free' as 'window dressing' on the outside of each joint, just in case the plumbing inspector came by and tested his joints!

Nevertheless, I just had the water in each of my buildings tested for lead in response to questions about old city plumbing. And the tests showed no detectable level of lead in any of my pipes.

Good news in this lead sensitive times.