[LukeZero]

Originally Posted by turbocruiser

Luke, thanks for this advice, I really appreciate it. I never thought of the fact that "insulation" insulates the pipe from both the heated air and the cold air. Well, I thought of it, but not in that context. Still, unless I'm way wrong with assuming this, with the water coming into the house from the ten foot deep underground line it is going to get to around 50 to 55F at the inlet and then stay there assuming no transfer of heat or cold, right? In other words, by insulating my interior wall pipes I can see what you are saying that they are not going to get the benefit of my 70+F degree house, but they also are not going to get the detriment of the outside temps, would they actually freeze on their own with that in mind?

Another question since you are a professional plumber, I was watching "Holmes on Homes" the other day ( I love that show ) and Mike stated "water pipes can take a lot of cold but they cant take a lot of cold airflow around them" I had no idea what he meant by that. Do you? In the center of our crawlspace it never gets below about 60F but at the edges by exterior walls it is cooler and one of my polybutylene pipes froze once from having some cold airflow next to it. There was a foundation vent within a foot or so of that particular pipe so I closed the vent, and had no problems afterwards. I just cannot wrap my mind around that comment though and was wondering with all my pipes wrapped (in wall pipes with regular foam tubes and crawlspace pipes with rubberized foam tubes) how cold would it have to get to freeze? Thanks again I appreciate it.

I think he was trying to say that air flow of any sort will move energy in a hurry...so that if you have less than 32* air blowing onto a pipe, you can freeze it very quickly, while a pipe that is surrounded by less than 32* air that is stagnant will not freeze as quickly because the energy is not going out of the water as fast...Think wind chill. You "feel" colder than it actually is because the wind is removing the heat out of your body faster than if it were just as cold, but no wind.

Originally Posted by turbocruiser

AFAIK, there was only one gray pipe. I have heard that PEX, which is also plastic, is super good stuff.

PEX is good stuff. Polybutylene wasn't as bad as everyone makes it out to be. The manufacturer of the resin (Shell Petroleum) stated, from as early as the mid '70s that the chemical composition of the tubing and the acetyl fittings were not very tolerant of chlorine and that plumbers should be cautious about using the materials in system that had chlorine content. (typically municipal water supplies would be chlorinated for bacteria control). Lo and behold, the tubing and fittings did break down from chlorine. People got pissed, sued their plumbers, who, in turn, sued QEST, who, in turn sued Shell. Shell said "hey, we told you not to do that, why is this our problem?" Finally, to shed the entire issue, Shell said, "OK, we'll stop making the resin, which will prevent all manufacturers from making the products, and we'll pony up this amount of money to reimburse end users with failed systems- now make it all go away." We have a stash of PB tubing and fittings and are able, with customer permission, to repair existing systems, provided they are hooked to well systems that are not chlorinated in any way.