Quote:
Originally Posted by kerry
Are you referring to shark fittings? I like them and use them myself. I've wondered about the life span of the o-rings but I haven't had any fail yet and some are about 6 years old. I've had soldered joints fail in the past so they're not guaranteed. I also use Pex now instead of copper. Where I attach Pex to copper I use a shark fitting.
I put in a water heater a few weeks ago. $540 for a 50 gallon gas heater from Home Depot and a couple of hours work. Didn't use shark fittings or pex because the old heater had flexible copper connectors. Worst part was getting the old heater up the stairs from the basement, god, those things get heavy after being in use for 10 yrs.
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Yes shark fittings are having good acceptance it seems.
If Tom had to replace that failed drain pipe in his building with large copper by code today. He would have had no concern about the price as the stroke would have done him in.
Forty to fifty feet of four inch or larger new copper pipe today might be like buying chrome for the 39 Studebaker. . I have doubts the pipe failed from flow erosion over the years. More likely from chemical reaction.
Although I cannot think of what was the most probable active component. So perhaps just a poor grade of copper pipe or straight corrosion of the copper over time. The plastic replacements are really cheap anyways by comparison.
Actually another consideration came to mind. Perhaps the original drains where cast iron. At sometime a section was replaced with copper. That could have created the anode for the remaining cast iron in the drain system.
Who gets the salvage or scrap value of the old copper? Was about three dollars a pound the last time I sold some I think.