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Originally Posted by Engine09
I have a friend with poly-b water lines in his house and he's having a company replace every single water line due to the high failure rate. I had no idea that type of pipe was so prone to failure but I guess it's serious enough that a lot of people are paying to have drywall cut open and everything replaced.
Has anyone here had this done? I'm curious how the old line is removed and how much drywall needs to be cut open, especially with clips nailed to the studs used to secure the original water line during installation. How do they fish the new line?
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I had it done earlier this year. No issues in the poly B until it did, then it started to cascade. The failure point in my home was just above the utility room. With an 80s era dual furnace, I guess the hot and cold contributed to the failure even though the UV exposure thing or connectors weren't as big of a contributing factor.
Each time, it cost $600-900 for a repair. We're talking pinhole leaks and hair line cracks. The plumber would rip out a piece of poly B + and put in PEX. But then some other section had an issue, so we had to call in again in less than 12 months so after $1,500 in repairs and going from zero in the history of the house when I bought it to twice in less than 12 months only 2 years of owning the house, I decided to bite the bullet and replace it all. For most people, waiting until failure is OK, but according to websites poly B only has an expected life of around 25 years. Mine was almost 35 years when I had it replaced. Not to mention, as soon as you have an issue, it either is a cascading issue that you might as well do it all, or you get a singular catastrophic issue. My friend's place had this issue probably 10 years ago when his house was around 25 years. Returned from a vacation to a kitchen that flooded after less than 24 hours of someone checking on the house (albeit I wondered if there was already a hairline crack the person checking the house didn't even notice). A couple days of inconvenience plus a few casual weeks of cosmetic patch ups is less than the months of BS and insurance stuff to deal with if you get a catastrophic failure.
How much work depends on the house. If you have lines going everywhere, it's more. If your water pipes are situated in specific locations, it's less. Walls and ceilings had to be cut open in my home. Approximately 6-8 locations on the wall and approximately 4-6 locations in the ceilings (some were close to each other so I don't know whether to call them 1 or 2). They ranged in size from 3-4 inches squared to 1-2 feet squared. One of the holes was in the stone of the jacuzzi so that the entire piece of poly B could be done instead of it partially poly B PEX method. I just asked for a nice specific size and I put a plastic access panel over the hole. I also took the opportunity to put in pressure valves so I'm not dancing as much when people use the bathroom or other taps while I'm showering.
Overall it took around 2.5 days so it wasn't super intrusive, but the cosmetic part was a bit more involved than the actual poly B work. Hiring someone to patch the walls, sand it, let it dry wasn't bad. That was done within a week and a half after the 2.5 days work. But the painting it, and the ceiling texture... tbh that's not done yet after more than half a year. That's more laziness on my part though. I've painted what needs to be painted, but nothing more. I haven't bothered with the ceiling to save time and effort and no one notices it anyways.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dubc80
Yeah this is very common. I see lots of posts in my community facebook group about poly-b failures and replacements. I think lots of houses in Calgary from the early/mid 90's have it.
Luckily we have not had issues in my 6 years in this home, but the day will likely come at some point.
I think most folks wait to have a failure, then just replace that portion.
Or, if you're doing a major reno people will do it then and do a full re-do of all the piping while you're at it.
You can run into insurance issues too, as some companies will not insure a house with it.
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Insurance wise, they can insure a house with poly B, but they have to get a special inspection done. That's what I had. Basically they inspected the types of connectors used to terminate the poly B or something like that, took pictures and said they'd only insure a portion of the damages caused by poly B failure. For my friend who dealt with that a decade ago, basically they only paid 1/4 or 1/3 of the costs to repair his kitchen. Part of that was partial coverage, part of that was him wanting to upgrade the kitchen rather than just restore it.
I think for non-insuring of a house with poly B, that's extremely rare in Canada but much more common in the US.
After I got the project done, I get an insurance rate reduction and peace of mind. Plus I think the value of the house increases by more than the price I paid to get it done.
Project wise, it certainly helps to contemplate other things you can do while the walls are open. Ethernet line isn't a bad thing to consider doing as well (easier to fish lines).