Wirsbo hepex failure

scott inM.E.

For the simple fact that this stuff is rated @180(+,-) WE WILL only use it on radiant or a system W/an indirect Hh20 tank. Pex,wirsbo,Watts black onik is great stuff, just design and use it in your installs properly. Boilers reaching 225/245 I would hope the boiler releif would be the first thing to (POP).

Jim P

Wirsbo he pex failure

I recently installed baseboard heat in a relatives house, using hepex for the supply and returns. Tonight I received a call beacause the homeowner heard a large boom in his basement and saw water pouring onto the floor. The pex line burst!!!. I had the lines clipped on the side of the joists about every 18". Any thoughts on the cause?

Timco

Did the pex see prolonged sunlight maybe?

T

Jim P

No. The tube went from the box, to the basement, to bursting all within 5 days. It is my understanding that sunlight breaks down the oygen barrier. Would that compromise the tube to the extent of bursting???

Weezbo

pressure and temp

valved off captive air tank?

Can Light with 800w Light bulb:)

Have you actually Seen the Burst pipe or are you trusting someones word on the subject?

reason is,If the boom was something heard that might have been some completely disjunctive sound and the leak may have occured due to a sheetrock screw days months earlier....only happening to be brought to the home owners attention upon investigation of the area. just saying.... it could happen ask any of the "I,Just Came Back from that floor installation ten nails ago" experientialists...just put the carpet in did they?.....

seems to be running out the door header Ay?

nm staple tacked right trough the pipe...these are a few of many an experience...underlayment anyone?

singh

pex fiitings

Did the connections seperate or the pipe had a failure.
If the connections were made up improperly, propex or other
and the high expansion rate of the pex could have pulled out of the baseboard connections,especially if the pex had no place to go because of the clips.

Bill Nye_2

Jim

What kind of water temperature? Did the aquastat fail or is the burner miswired in any way? Is the aquastat capillary bulb inserted all the way into the well?

You could make 250 -260° water under the wrong conditions. I seriously doubt you would have much of an explosion with 12 psi and > 180° water

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Big Ed

Ah Ha!

> What kind of water temperature? Did the aquastat

> fail or is the burner miswired in any way? Is the

> aquastat capillary bulb inserted all the way into

> the well?

>

> You could make 250 -260° water

> under the wrong conditions. I seriously doubt you

> would have much of an explosion with 12 psi and _

> 180° water

>

> _A

> HREF="http://www.heatinghelp.com/getListed.cfm?id=

> 351&Step=30"_To Learn More About This

> Professional, Click Here to Visit Their Ad in

> "Find A Professional"_/A_



> What kind of water temperature? Did the aquastat

> fail or is the burner miswired in any way? Is the

> aquastat capillary bulb inserted all the way into

> the well?

>

> You could make 250 -260° water

>




Plastic pipes..... Knew them pipes won't last .Time to dust off them die stocks and be real plumbers now .. Buying iron ore futures this very minute...Plastic pipes Bah Humbug !

Joel_3

time for my rant !

Ok now first off you may not have done this so let me state this isn't directed at you .

Now just last month I got a call from a 2 yold house we put A/C in , we did not do the heat . They also heard a boom , "nice kaboom Wiley" (buggs bunny) from the basement. They went down and steam and water everywhere . The house has Pex from a major company it is tied to baseboard . The house has a tankless oil fired boiler . The pex is stamped 180f max . This is of course a problem because the oil company wants about 180 MINIMUM temp or else folks complain about not enough hot water.

Can you see what's coming ? The controlls on these boilers,also from a major american company are very inaccurate and can float 20-40f .

on our kaboom , the boiler was set to turn off at 210 but floated all the way up to 235 -240 . Plumbers do these installs for the biulder with pex and a tankless boiler because it is faster/cheaper , they also do not insulate the lines which is a code violation but seem not get called on it .

IMHO , this type of application is a grave mistake that will lead to more failures. Pex should not be used on such a system even if it does not blow out today how much will it's lifespan be shortened ?

Both of the blowouts occured on bends that where rubbing on wood , no insulation to cushion them . we repaired it , changed the aquastsat and reset it at a lower temperature . Next call we got , " What did you do now we can't get enough hot water" . We told them we reset the temp to the max allowed by the pex company and that they really should buy an indirect instead of the tankless . Of course they don't want to hear that and now we are the bad guy even though we didn't put it in. Gotta love it.

These failures will hurt the radiant industry . you know that familly is going to tell people " No don't get radiant or it will blow out and flood your house right inside the floor ,because it happened to us" Better yet home many more times will it happen before it gets in the papers or on the news .

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Joel_3

time for my rant !

Ok now first off you may not have done this so let me state this isn't directed at you .

Now just last month I got a call from a 2 yold house we put A/C in , we did not do the heat . They also heard a boom , "nice kaboom Wiley" (buggs bunny) from the basement. They went down and steam and water everywhere . The house has Pex from a major company it is tied to baseboard . The house has a tankless oil fired boiler . The pex is stamped 180f max . This is of course a problem because the oil company wants about 180 MINIMUM temp or else folks complain about not enough hot water.

Can you see what's coming ? The controlls on these boilers,also from a major american company are very inaccurate and can float 20-40f .

on our kaboom , the boiler was set to turn off at 210 but floated all the way up to 235 -240 . Plumbers do these installs for the biulder with pex and a tankless boiler because it is faster/cheaper , they also do not insulate the lines which is a code violation but seem not get called on it .

IMHO , this type of application is a grave mistake that will lead to more failures. Pex should not be used on such a system even if it does not blow out today how much will it's lifespan be shortened ?

Both of the blowouts occured on bends that where rubbing on wood , no insulation to cushion them . we repaired it , changed the aquastsat and reset it at a lower temperature . Next call we got , " What did you do now we can't get enough hot water" . We told them we reset the temp to the max allowed by the pex company and that they really should buy an indirect instead of the tankless . Of course they don't want to hear that and now we are the bad guy even though we didn't put it in. Gotta love it.

These failures will hurt the radiant industry . you know that familly is going to tell people " No don't get radiant or it will blow out and flood your house right inside the floor ,because it happened to us" Better yet how many more times will it happen before it gets in the papers or on the news .

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Jim P

Pex failure

I had the boiler aquastat set at 180. I checked the aquastat last night and the boiler shut off around 190. I did see the pex pipe, it did blow apart, like m-80 was in it.


Jim

Al Corelli

Wow. Got any pictures?

[Deleted User]

In all of the millions of feet of PEX pipe I;ve installed....

and it is literally in the millions of feet, I've had two PEX explosions.

One, some frikin' idiot with a torch in his hands was trying to "massage" a kink out of a 3/4" PEX line under 100 pounds of air pressure. Tubing swelled up like a ballon and KABOOM, blew apart. I jumped off the ladder just as it was exploding. OOpps, guess you know who the idiot was now...

The other one, the electrician decided to move the can lights into the middle of the hallway, directly below our PEX distribution main. It made a pretty good mess...

Redundant aquastats are cheap...

Looks like you lose. Or your insurance company.

I've seen PEX at temperatures over 200 degrees F hold, so it sounds as if there were some mitigating circumstances in your case.

I'll continue using PEX.

If I had a dollar for every copper tubing failure I'd seen in my 32 years of plumbing, I'd be a prettty wealthy man.

It's a matter of control...

ME

Ted_9

Pex

Joel hit the nail on the head.

When ever we use pex, we are installing systems that use lower water temps 95% of the time(outdoor/indoor reset).



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Kevin O. Pulver

Shame on you Mark!

You know the book says you're not supposed to use a torch to massage kinks out of pex.
When this idiot Kaboomed one I was using a heat gun like you're supposed to! (the book didn't remind me to drop the air test first) Kevin

Ted_9

Plumbers

Real plumbers and heating professionals learn and adapt to the times.

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Jim P

Problem found

The controls were wired wrong. The taco sr-501 was wired through the a honeywell boiler aquastat/relay. The tt to boiler from the sr-501 was wired to the milli voltage on the honeywell. The the t-stat for the new zone would call for heat and the boiler would fire. The boiler would not respond to the 180 max setting on the aquastat and would heat to 220 or 230, causing the pex to fail. I did not do the wiring!

Jim

singh

hurrah for pex.

Darin Cook_3

And So

The pex worked within the parameters stated by the manufacturer. One helluva way to have the product tested out, but it did what wirsbo said it would do! That is good to know.







Darin

S Ebels

80 psi @ 200*F

Viega's pex and PAP carries 100psi @ 180* and 80psi @ 200*. We use it exclusively on everything from near boiler piping to BB runs to panel radiators. Never had a problem, but then these are all systems which we installed and designed from top to bottom. Max temp at design is typically 170* and there is always a redundant A-stat in the system.

On second thought....... We do have a system that routinely see's 200+ water. In fact I have seen it running around 220-225 while making domestic. It's in a dairy barn and while the heating side of the system never calls for that temp, the PAP will see that temp for a few minutes when the system comes out of domestic production and the heating circs turn back on. Time will tell but I'm not worried.

Joel_3

our kaboom

we have no problem as we did not install it . On our kaboom the aquastat would allow the boiler to go to somewhere around 235f and the relief valve would not lift with 45 PSI on the boiler . this was 2yold system . We frequently see these grey box controlls that allow tankless boilers to reach these temps , No I do not think that this is the fault of the pex itself . However I do believe that the companies should not be promoting this type of install . they encourage plumbers to use the tubing in this fashion. as these systems age more reliefs will not want to lift unitl 40 50 and more of the aquatstats will get floaty temp wise . When this happen more tube will fail .
now you'l say " ya but that shouldn't happen because..." yup I agree but reardless the point is it does happen , will continue to increase and it's only a mattter of time before it's on your 6 oclock "gotttcha news sting".

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Big Ed

Plumbers

Lots of risk with new stuff ...

[Deleted User]

I know, I know...

There were mitigating circumstances. It was 4:30 on Friday, my crew had already left with the 200' worth of extension cords necessary to get to the pwer pole. I was cranky and in a hurry, and I paid the price. I ended up having to go back on Saturday and "fix" the screw up and repressurize the system. We'd called for a Monday inspection...

No excuses. Follow the book.

ME

Dave Stroman

When I went to the Wirsbo factory years ago I watched them test a piece of PEX at 200*. It took 400 psi to burst it. That is double the rating of the tubing. It seems that PEX should still hold 45 psi at 240*. Perhaps not. Maybe its ability to hold pressure drops off drastically above 200*. Maybe there was actually steam running through that tubing.
I, too, have installed miles of pex tubing with no failures.

Dave in Denver

Big Ed

Murphys Law

limits are going to fail.People are going to make unknowing and stupid mistakes...It will happen...And when a big mistake happens ,the lawyers will debate...And the national insurance co. will decide.... That's the way it is....

Constantin

Like most thermoplastics,

I imagine that PEX has a fairly constant material strength, until you come closer and closer to the melting point. Then, the strength rapidly deteriorates. I forget the name of that point where the strength takes a nosedive, but there is a scientific description for it.

Mad Dog_2

Very odd and rare..................................

Maybe the connection to the copper but highly unlikely that the pex itself burst. Mad Dog

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James Bates

?Rare indeed, BUT...

BUT….. had TWO failures here in last two weeks in 10 year old Wirsbo hePEX radiant Floor heat tubing. Actually only one was Wirsbo. Wirsbo-hePEX ½” SDR9 100PSI/180* - 80PSI/200* ASTM F876 HAUSER UB06941212….IT burst like a lateral split seam in middle of return (COLD) leg to boiler. Feeder hePEX was strung beam to beam across the basement ceiling using large staples with the plastic insulators. Heat source is Trane two pipe steam system taken off the Weil Mclain 572 steam boiler DHW coil. Aquastat had been set to 160*F but after the first hePEX burst was reduced to 140*F…What I am guessing is that when the boiler chugs for an hour building steam first thing in the morning (the Tstat is setback to 55*F at night from 65*F in day) the boiler water is reaching almost 220*F to generate steam at the (present) 3PSI steam (formerly 5 to 8 PSI steam) and I am also guessing that the water pressure in this area runs about 80-90PSI.. What I find is strange is , ASSuming combination water pressure/temperature stressing, why did the failure happen in the (cold) return leg of the open air radiating return leg??? Would not the return temperature have dropped substantially from an assumed 220*F start point at boiler DHW coil 20 feet of air radiating source feed tubing in basement then the radiant floor (12x12 foot with 3 exposed walls, well insulated) and THEN exiting into the basement on COLD return leg back to boiler??It is the cold return that burst.
This basement feed run was then replaced with ½ inch copper with the appropriate pex couplers BUT….. the repair tech came up short on the HOT supply leg of copper and for last 8 inches before the pex splice he spliced in some white colored tubing, Guess what??? That burst a week after the repair. Actually literally bubble melted a nice ¼ inch hole (see pics). In this case I do not know the rating, simply the tech gave assurance that “IT WOULD WORK”. Temperature across the exposed uninsulated copper pipe after 20 foot run in basement should have dropped, but by how much??? Alfred/Jim

ScottMP

Hey Ed ?

Ever burn you self with hot lead ?

How about a 3" copper DWV fitting ?

Ever see a Cast Iron soil pipe split down the middle ?

How about twisting your back on a 650 lb cast iron tub ?

My Point ?

Lots of risks with old stuff too.

Scott


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Big Ed

I Agree

First off... I have to be truthfull I am set up for pex and use it my self. Not 100 percent ,but it has its place..What can I say its "easy". The hardest part is fastening the stuff..A cost affective good working staple gun is on my list..

I am taking the side of the scared plumber because it is easy. Not just for the loss of work but I can see every Mutt and Jeff playing plumber. Just the other Day on a no heat call ,new install besides no bfp or lwco..the miles of pex was hanging everywhere like party streamers.... Indirect - three zones-z valves and a lone 007 pumping toward the tank....The relief popped spraying the area ...no drips..

As the scared plumber that pulled out enough stone lined hwh which they claimed would last forever..What is pex time life ??How proven is this stuff ?What can go wrong? We are starting to find out I think...... I don't trust any thing... I went through the Nixon era....

Big Ed

A Dollar


> If I had a dollar for every copper

> tubing failure I'd seen in my 32 years of



> plumbing, I'd be a prettty wealthy man.

>






At $100-$150 per hour you better be rich . Just joking with ya......Heck if I had Marks money my kids could retire...