> water itself is horribly corrosive Funnily enough, this is technically true, but would only manifest in a warped reality. In the acidic/caustic scale, regul

> water itself is horribly corrosive Funnily enough, this is technically true, but would only manifest in a warped reality. In the acidic/caustic scale, regular water is just slightly on the caustic side of neutral. (pH 5.5 or thereabouts?) - It won't strip the pipes it runs in. But that's not the kind of water we're talking about here. That would be pure distilled water. It's the near-universal cleaning agent. Because of the complete lack of impurities, distilled water has the ability to absorb fair amounts of almost anything it gets in contact with. It also tastes really bad. (The taste of "nothing" for regular water is our calibrated baseline with various minerals and other impurities. If you take all of that out, the perceptual difference between expected and experienced is quite stark.) For what it's worth, cavitation and turbulence are much more likely culprits to eat the plumbing material. Also: shoddy quality will always cause problems, regardless of your choice of materials.