Made In the USA vs. ?
Inspired by a recent discussion, what have you experienced from materials made in places "other than" the U.S. ? Or, for that matter, materials "made" in the U.S. ? What brought you to using said items? What habits have you developed if any, that you practice on a daily basis to combat or embrace those habits?
Share a story about what happened.
Please offer your experiences to the HVAC/R, steam heating, plumbing etc. industry only. And refrain from any political comments.
Hopefully something will be learned.
Comments
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99.99% is Made somewhere else……………..
Now Assembled in America is different.
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I'll offer one that most all can appreciate. Pipe threads.
This still plagues us from many years ago when pipe nipples started coming from abroad. Since then it has been teflon tape and pipe dope on the threads. Before that, it was one or the other but not so much both. Im wondering when if ever I will be able to stop using both. Seems to me that the pipe thread issue has been resolved but when?
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are you seeing ripped threads, or out of tolerance?
Bob "hot rod" Rohr
trainer for Caleffi NA
Living the hydronic dream0 -
Made in America and Made in the USA have different requirements. One of them the materials and labor have to be 109% American. The other allows imported materials.
Buy America and Buy American also have different requirements.
Build America is yet another recent act
Bob "hot rod" Rohr
trainer for Caleffi NA
Living the hydronic dream0 -
Im speaking to maybe ten or twenty plus years years ago when there was a, in my experience and others, black malleable fittings and steel pipe with poorly manufactured threads on common pipes.
Im hoping folks here will share some issues they have had and what was done about it, what was the cause etc.
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Absolutely. Now, have you experienced any issues with made in and not made in the U.S.? Or both? Some schlock material that has been around for a long time or hasn't.
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I remember years ago there was a type of heating thermostat that was shipped but didn't work with Taco 555 power heads. ( I don't remember the name of the thermostat manufacturer ) But what was the fix? After months of, and thousands of issues, the solution was to offer some type of resistor?? wired directly to the power head. A lot of damage was done to the reputation of the manufacturer. I believe they changed their name or went belly up or? But I never saw them again.
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Even manufactured in the US with 100% US labor, if the raw material is imported you may still get an inferior product.
It seems like when investment or offshore companies buy up manufacturing, quality control slips. We have seen that with generations old American motor and switch companies.
Value engineer a switch to save a penny makes sense to bean counters when you sell 10 million a year.
Bob "hot rod" Rohr
trainer for Caleffi NA
Living the hydronic dream0 -
I'm not convinced that broad generalizations, such as "all Chinese stuff is junk" or "Buy American for quality" or "only the French can make beautiful clothes (or wine!)" are particularly useful, although some might be — but not always for obvious reasons.
Nor is price always a good guide. It is tempting to suppose that the more expensive of two widgets will be better quality or more fit for purpose, but that's not always the case.
There are just too many variables.
A good part of the problem is that, for better or worse, we are part of a global economy, but that economy is by no means uniform either in regard to material availability, craftsmanship, productivity, attitude towards quality control, etc. etc. Nor do those things stay constant over time.
The companies who make and furnish the various widgets will — quite naturally — strive to strike a balance between total cost input and quality and final cost to the ultimate user — and each outfit will strike their own balance. On the whole, if something can be made in several different places, to an acceptable quality standard, a company — if they can — will select the place with lower total cost inputs so they can either make more profit or sell at a lower price. in many cases, it will be possible to make a higher quality product at the same or less cost in one place than in another, and it is quite reasonable to expect manufacturers to do so.
Interesting problem…
Br. Jamie, osb
Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England
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For equipment like boilers, furnaces. Being made in America seems to make little difference in my experience. The assembly of the unit is only a small piece of that puzzle. I have seen plenty of those units assembled in the US that have used lower quality components (no matter those components country of origin) and have been poorly assembled. I have also seen the opposite side of this, where a US made piece of equipment sourced higher quality components and assembled the equipment very well. If a company decides to assemble here just for the "made in the USA" label, but sources cheaper components to offset the cost of US assembly, there may not be any benefit in overall quality (not factoring in any geopolitical concerns on this)
Individual components that are US made (pipe, fittings, small electronics etc) there seems to be an overall quality improvement over certain country of origin, specifically any country with cheap labor. Cheaper labor+lower tolerances = less expensive product that can be sold at a higher margin. If you look at European manufacturing, more or less I haven't noticed a huge quality difference between the US equivalent, but we don't really get to test all of these out as some European made products wouldn't make as much sense to import due to differing size standards. There is also the same incentive in Europe to turn profit as we have here, I imagine the quality spectrum is quite similar.
In general it seems to me that if you are manufacturing pretty much anything where the labor is relatively expensive, it starts to make less sense to source inferior materials or components (no matter where those may come from), but it most definitely still happens. You are already not going to be in the cheapest price range and might as well go for the higher quality market. As with all business there is incentive to cheap out somewhere to turn more profit, and I'm afraid that is a human nature issue rather than a country of origin issue.
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I agree with the above posts about pipe threads.
I was working out of town 2 hours away and luckily there was a small supply house in town. Used my credit card until I had our company open an account there because this job went on for a year.
We had most of our pipe and fittings delivered from another supplier, but you always need a place to pick up odds and ends especially on a big job.
They had a pretty good supply of ProPress and black fittings. I was rushing to get there before closing time for some black nipples and picked up a couple nipple runs of 3/4". They were in boxes, and I was in a hurry, so I just threw them in the truck and went to the job.
When I opened it out of the 11 nipples there was probably 4-5 that were useable and even those were not very good. Some of the ends were cut crooked and all torn up. You could tell they just had dull dies or no oil and just threaded them and threw them in the box. Awful.
Said China on the box.
Had another job once that was welded gas line. It wouldn't pass a pressure test. They welder we had was very good. We tested the fittings over and over and couldn't find it. Turned out to be a seam in the pipe which was foreign made.
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I tend to agree.
For example, Chinese drones and 3d printers are pretty much the best there is in the world. Both in engineering and build quality. I'm not sure where cellphones are made, but those too are truly unbelievable in quality.
But, usually when you see plumbing fittings etc that say China they usually stink.
I don't think there's a correlation between quality and country anymore honestly. And sometimes, not even price.
Single pipe 392sqft system with an EG-40 rated for 325sqft and it's silent and balanced at all times.
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The only thing I have purchased lately that is made in the USA is a host of Breeo fire pit products including the firepit. it performs as well as the Chinese SOLO fire pit. It is built very well , looks better, and my wife never fails to find something for me from their website to add to my collection. Their engineering is second to none.
Very difficult to find anything made here.
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About 8 or 9 years ago..South Korean Copper solder fittings would not go on to the copper tubing. Chinese black steel.pipe would not fit in to a stock & die. Mad Dog
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Ward (Made in USA!) Fittings have never disappointed. Anvil (USA) also VG. Imports? Crooked threads, sand holes....no thanks… labor trumps material cost when you have to take it apart. Mad Dog
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Anyone reading my posts knows what I think of Chinese fittings.
They can't even get 90-degrees right.
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I'm a Locavore (shop local, Mom & Pops whenever possible, support local families and economy) to begin with. Add the fact that American Made stuff is almost always more durable & superior, it's an easy choice. Conversely, if American stuff was garbage, All bets are off. Mad Dog
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Our local supply only stocks Chinese fittings.
When I asked about Ward they told me there's no difference they just cost more.😡
Single pipe 392sqft system with an EG-40 rated for 325sqft and it's silent and balanced at all times.
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HUH?! is that a chain location or something?
I'm pretty sure my company completely stopped carrying import black fittings… We tried to play that game racing to the bottom briefly but nobody wanted to buy them lol. Luckily we have always stocked Ward and Anvil, I think a few of our odd size nipples are made in south korea, no more or less issue with those than the US ones.
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Nope, not at all. Small family owned plumbing supply.
I'm not going to say the name or anything for obvious reasons, but I'm pretty sure he carries what most of his customers want to buy and that's that. I can't really blame him for that.
There was another place, General Plumbing Supply (GPS) and they carried Anvil by where I used to work, but that place closed up.
So, for fittings etc, I use Supplyhouse so I can get Ward.
Single pipe 392sqft system with an EG-40 rated for 325sqft and it's silent and balanced at all times.
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you tell him your willing to pay for the quality they’ll stock em.
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Our supplies-fittings, nus,bolts, screws was kept stocked by an outfit that supplied only chinese manufactured stuff. Most of the hardware is stainless. What junk. We stopped using them years ago but still have their stock. Yesterday, I grabbed some #3 x 1" woodscrews. They are one and done. The heads get stripped.
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The above comments are all valid.
The experience with Chinese fittings is expected. They are a low technology product a and the purchaser ("manufacturer in the US") does not have any quality control over the production in China. The Chinese produce an inferior product based upon thread OD, and pitch diameter and the product sells in great quantities in the USA. So, why would anybody try to improve the quality of this product?
Now, take the example of Apple who build cellphones in China. I am quite sure they have an extensive staff ON-SITE in China that inspects a certain percentage of all products and rejects the entire batch if one of them is flawed.
This cannot be done with plumbing fitting due to the low value.
So, it always depends on whether the US manufacturer can expend the funds to ENSURE that the product meets the specification.
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I think there's survivorship bias going on in regards to USA and Western European made goods. Globalization has made it difficult to compete on the lowest priced goods manufactured in countries with higher wages. Because of that, most of the companies that have survived making goods here have had to focus on quality. This, with good reason, has made people notice that on average USA made goods are of better quality simply because there aren't many companies left competing at the low end.
It's not that China or wherever can't make quality goods, it's just easier to find quality when buying US made because the third world has the bottom end of the market saturated with lower quality cheap goods.
It's getting more complicated by the fact that the supply chain is global as well, making it even hard to tell where something is truly made. Also the difference in price seems to be getting bigger to the point that for most things, I'd rather buy tools made in Taiwan and get a tool maybe 80-90% as good as the US made if it's going to be 1/3 of the price.
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Would you recommend using Midea minisplits? Made in China and sold under so many different names. Sold by "american" companies. And they cost a good bit less than, say, Fujitsu or Daiken etc.
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Better to recommend who installs a product and how well they might warranty their work, and for that matter, the warranty of the unit. It can be a indicator of how well they back up there product.
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As much as I hate to admit this, I have had WAY better luck with foreign materials. I used to be very pure on American made everything (aside from circulators) and after countless cracked or otherwise effed up fittings and components from Ward, Anvil, Elkhart, Uponor, Spirotherm, Webstone, and recently Lochinvar I've about had it with everybody. Valves and pump flanges in particular, I've been using Bluefin almost exclusively for several years now and have NEVER had a problem out of several thousand units, while Webstone and Apollo seem to have about a 20% failure rate. Nipples and black fittings are 90% import now for the same reason. At least a dozen callbacks from cracked Ward or Anvil tees/elbows/unions on gas, and not a single one from the imports. Don't get me wrong, I love Lochinvar boilers too and have several hundred in the field but the past year has been completely ridiculous with QC issues. I had 32 of them in 2024 that needed some sort of attention right out of the box, and am currently on week 5 of waiting for a control board for a regular old NKB-110 that failed after 3 days. Navien is looking better and better every day.
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Like many here I've had bad experiences and good experiences with US and offshore parts. If the part has a PCB with solder joints, seeing Hecho en Mexico makes me figure on having issues. So many cracked/dry solder joints. How can any QC pass them?
Though lately the most frustrating I've seen are the made in China white Riello cad cells. No lens covers over the cad cell, nothing to retain (can be moved around) or center the cell sensor face towards the flame, big globby solder. I know they are cheaper than OE, but wow…
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You can almost break this into two categories: Consumers, and Producers.
- Consumers want cheap, and many readily accept the cheapest junk available.
- Producers want quality and longevity, since they lose money and are forced to redo work over if it's junk.
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After reading all these posts, Im wondering if "Made in USA" label no longer has the same quality advantage as years past? Sadly, one must not forget the influence of Wall Street influence on buying up established good quality companies, forming mergers and in the end cheapening the product to serve the Board Room executives and their investors for profits sake - just sayin
Regards,
RTW
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Yep. "Cash cow" businesses that make high quality products year after year are of no interest to private equity/investment bankers as their equity value doesn't change. They make money running up stock price which is most easily done by cutting costs. Works for a bit, they sell out and we get more crap products living off the brand. Over and over. 😕
Trying to squeeze the best out of a Weil-McLain JB-5 running a 1912 1 pipe system.1 -
I disagree, Made in USA carries more weight than ever atleast in the Plumbing & Heating universe. I have not personally seen or found the mass failures of USA Made products, 1980s Detriot being the exception. Whether the consumer buys in to it and cares is an entirely different issue. Many Americans love a sale & a deal above all else. T Each to his/her own. Mad Dog
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I've noticed that PSC oil burner motors made in China don't last long. When I learned Beckett was switching their sourcing to China, I bought up all the previous units I could find- OK, they came from "Rotomatika" in Romania, but they hold up better than the Chinese ones.
All Steamed Up, Inc.
Towson, MD, USA
Steam, Vapor & Hot-Water Heating Specialists
Oil & Gas Burner Service
Consulting
2
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