Should You Install Plastic or Steel Plumbing Pipes?

Advantages and disadvantages or choosing plastic piping over metal piping in plumbing.

When you think of installing a new pipe or replacing the existing plumbing system, certain questions are bound to flood your mind. Of these, the most dominant would be whether to use plastic or steel pipes. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, however, the choice you make shouldn’t just base on their durability, but on their effect to the health and wellbeing of your family.

Early plumbing techniques made use of lead pipes due to their immense capability when it comes to resisting leakages. However, lead has been attributed to health problems that mostly affect pregnant women and children under the age of 6 in many places around the world. The government has insisted on replacing lead pipes ever since these medical revelations first occurred and many homeowners have obliged. The only problem is that as pipes around the homes were replaced with other materials, most homeowners didn’t change the mains pipe. It is therefore necessary to check and replace lead pipes especially if your home was built before 1970.

Steel was then widely regarded as a good replacement lead pipes as it is easy to install and not susceptible to leaking or breakages. The fact that steel is rust resistant doesn’t mean that it is rust proof. In most cases, if you are using aged steel pipes, chances are that the water you’re drinking is contaminated with rust. In extreme cases, you might taste the rust in your drinking water. If you are to install plumbing as a DIY project, you might find steel hard to deal with especially where there is need for cutting, welding, and creating threads. The material is also expensive and difficult to transport.

Plastic on the other hand, is easy to install on a DIY project due to the ease of cutting, bending, and making connections even in small spaces. Its flexibility and portability makes it the best material to use for internal plumbing and also in areas that are difficult to reach. Plastic is a poor conductor of heat, which means that it retains more heat when used to transport hot water unlike steel pipes. The only thing you need to be careful with here is that hot water can bend normal PVC plastic, hence use Chlorinated PVC in such places since it is stronger.

During the cold winter, water is steel pipes tends to freeze resulting in bursts. This is unlike plastic, which is a poor heat conductor, thus water won’t freeze when temperatures go below normal levels. Plastic doesn’t release harmful chemicals to the water, which makes it ideal for transporting drinking water. This is very much unlike lead, brass, or zinc pipes that have been said to contain various amounts of harmful substances.

Given the advantages that plastic has over steel, it is definitely the best choice for use in domestic plumbing. It doesn’t add any harmful chemicals to drinking water, meaning that you can easily eliminate the small amounts of chemicals that mix with water in the treatment phase using a reverse osmosis water filter.

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