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There’s another loophole: “lead free” means that the wetted surface is no more than 0.25% lead (by mass, I think). As far as I know, lead has nice properties a
by amluto 3y ago
There’s another loophole: “lead free” means that the wetted surface is no more than 0.25% lead (by mass, I think).
As far as I know, lead has nice properties as an element added to brass alloys. Which is not an excuse for using it, IMO.
(Why is any of this still a thing? Stainless steel is cheaper than copper these days, and it’s a great material as long as you aren’t trying to screw one piece of stainless steel into another, and there isn’t a great reason why one should need to do much of that. And there are some excellent plastics available, too.)
- thfuran 3y agoAre there? It seems like plastics are shaping up to be the modern day lead.
- hadlock 3y agoLead roofing tends to get recycled into bullets in time of war, but those roofs that don't, are typically there forever (400+ years) and never leak. Some plastics are UV resistant due to additives but even copper struggles to compete with lead as a roofing material. You only need to look back to the 1970s to find PEX water piping and the disaster/flooding it can cause due to age.
- sokoloff 3y agoAre you thinking of polybutylene pipe, rather than Pex (cross-linked polyethylene)?
- 13of40 3y ago> Lead roofing tends to get recycled into bullets in time of war That's interesting - I've read that there are a lot of castles and stately houses whose demise started from the owners selling off the lead roof, but I never understood why it would be so valuable that you'd destroy the building for it. Is that why?
- prewett 3y agoQuite a number of British monastic churches and castles had their roofs sold off by Henry VIII, who was fully intending to destroy the building.
- CrazyPyroLinux 3y agoHopefully you don't have a fire....See: Notre Dame
- fransje26 3y ago[flagged]
- amluto 3y agoUsing McMaster-Carr as a benchmark, lead sheet is a bit more expensive than the same size and thickness of 316 stainless sheet. One of these is extremely toxic and the other is pretty much harmless. (Also, 316 stainless won’t magically corrode if there’s condensation on it, and the Internet suggests this is a problem with lead.) Sure, lead can be molded into place with traditional techniques if you can find a competent roofer with a sufficiently minimal desire for self-preservation. But modern standing seam roofs work pretty well.
- jacquesm 3y agoPlastics for potable water tend to be copper lined where I live, not sure what is used elsewhere.
- tredre3 3y agoI've never heard of copper-lined PEX, can you tell me more?
- londons_explore 3y agoI think op may be referring to 'barrier pipe', which is a plastic -copper-plastic sandwich, which is designed to keep out pollutants which can diffuse through the plastic - eg. Diesel oil. If you don't use it for underground water pipes in cities, you'll normally get complaints from homeowners about 'chemical smelling' water, particularly first thing in the morning when water has been sitting stationary in pipes all night.
- ClumsyPilot 3y agooh dear i forgot that plastics are permeable to petrochemicals lile paper is to water
- nate_meurer 3y agoThat's like saying "metal is strong". There are huge differences among different plastics.
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoWell, there are < 100 metals but thousands of varieties of plastic?
- nate_meurer 3y agoNot thousands, certainly not in common use. But yes there are many, and they have very different properties from one another, including permeability.
- ironmagma 3y agoThose don’t seem like comparables though. Lead is just one (or arguably a handful of) compounds, while there are at least dozens of species of plastic.
- Gigachad 3y agoI highly doubt it. They don't seem to be perfect, but they clearly aren't anywhere near as toxic as lead.
- datavirtue 3y agoI recently fell in love with copper pipes. So many advantages, so easy to work with. Quick and nearly fool-proof. I tried introducing some stainless fixtures and did not have a good time with it. I'm not a pro by any means but I do all of my own plumbing and gas work in my house. Haven't had one issue out of iron gas pipe or copper water lines. I was actually planning a pex install/replacement, and I have worked with it in my camper, but I changed my mind after doing some more work with copper recently (replaced water pressure regulator). Waaaaay cheaper than messing with pex.
- sokoloff 3y agoPeople often go to Pex because it's way cheaper than copper. I use copper because the rest of my house supply is copper, soldering pipe is a skill that I have and enjoy using, there's a slight anti-microbial action from copper, and I trust it to last longer than I have years left around. I sure don't do it because it's cheaper, though.
- cperciva 3y agoI know some plumbers recommend Pex because it fails catastrophically -- if you run a nail through a pipe you'll know it -- whereas copper can have pinhole leaks which will slowly grow mold all over the inside of your wall without you noticing.
- datavirtue 3y agoStraight new install of PEX might be cheaper but I can reuse copper fittings and they cost nearly nothing. Same with the runs of pipe...I can reuse copper without losing length. Just easier to deal with for maintenance.
- nrdvana 3y agoI had a house where a brand new copper line corroded and started leaking 2 years from installation, and I don't mean at joints or anything, I mean the local water just ate right through the wall of the pipe. I switched to Pex and was fairly happy with it. I never did do the research to figure out what was up with the water, but similarly, when I tried inventing my own sump-pump sensor by dipping copper wire into the sump well, it ate the copper wires apart in 3 days. I tried again with stainless rods and discovered that there was about .05 Volt per inch deep I put the sensor, i.e. the stainless rod near the top of the well would be about 2V higher (or lower, don't recall) than the stainless rod that ran to the bottom. Made it kind of annoying to design the circuit.