Newer in floor tubing

[Jim Robinson]

Does anybody recognize this type of in floor tubing? I'm not familiar with it. The house was built last year. What I really don't like is the two different colors and the clip fastener on the orange tubing. It reminds me of the PB fittings. The orange stuff also had a lot of small cracks visible on the exterior.

[Dom D'Agostino]

The lower piping looks like PEX-AL (aluminum covered PEX).

[Jim Robinson]

We just heard from the builder. It is Kitec, made by IPEX as far as I can tell. Anyone know any more about it? There's a lot of information on the web, but so far nothing that's told me it should not be used for in floor. Yet.

[Dom D'Agostino]

It was rated for in-floor applications (at least before the whole fitting recall and lawsuit). They have new plastic fittings and connections to replace the failing brass ones. I'm sure you've read about the issue by now. If the tubing was run in the floor with no splices or fittings, then hopefully the exposed fittings are the only ones installed.

Here is the manufacturers brochure pre-lawsuit:


(http://www.inspectionnews.net/home_inspection/www.sphcorp.com/download/KITEC_Best_of_Both_Worlds.pdf)

[Gunnar Alquist]

Does anybody recognize this type of in floor tubing? I'm not familiar with it. The house was built last year. What I really don't like is the two different colors and the clip fastener on the orange tubing. It reminds me of the PB fittings. The orange stuff also had a lot of small cracks visible on the exterior.

Hi Jim,

The upper, milky-white stuff looks like PEX as does the blue (at least from way over here in California). I am not familiar with the white stuff, so I can't give you any help there. Some of the PEX fittings are crimp connectors. I have the same reservations that you do about the crimp connections. But, I believe they are approved.

[Jim Robinson]

Yes, the upper ones are the usual PEX that I am used to seeing. There were some issues with the Kitec crimp connections, which seems to be the same story with all of the continuous tubing products. Most of that seemed to be back in the mid 2000's for Kitec.

[Rod Butler]

I hadn't heard any lawsuits regarding the PEX aluminum and have seen literally thousands and thousands of feet of it installed in concrete flooring. I thought it was great stuff from my experience with it.

The upper fittings are Pro-Pex. It works with an expander that mechanically expands the inner pipe and the outer ring around it and then the brass/plastic fitting is inserted and the swollen pipe returns to normal size creating the seal. It is very good stuff.

I know the lower crimp fittings give almost everyone an uneasy feeling but the engineering for them is sound. In reality it doesn't take a huge amount of pressure to make a banded fitting watertight. And as stated above, they are "approved".