Killdee
Senior Member
Our house was built in the 80s with all copper water lines and we had a leak develop in an interior wall a couple years ago. It flooded two rooms before we got the water supply turned off, required alot of work, mold remediation, etc. An inspection revealed little green spots of corrosion or electrolysis on most of the copper water lines throughout the house. It was just a matter of time before more leaks occurred, so we had the home re-piped with pex. We have no crawl space under the floor so the new pex pipe feeder and branch lines had to go up and into the roof/attic space, branch off down thru each interior wall connecting to each sink, toilet, water fixtures, etc all thru the house. Access holes were cut in the drywall in every wall to facilitate the fixture connections.
The pex pipe is supposed to be good BUT being in the attic, the plastic pex pipe and water gets scalding hot in the summer and freezing cold during the winter. A real PITA to say the least, very wasteful as we tend to run the water out until normal temp is felt, and it doesn't seem healthy for your drinking water to sit and/or flow thru scalding hot water pipes in the attic. We may not have to, but we now buy bottled water to drink and cook with. Your situation may be different if you have easy access but a licensed plumber would probably be the best option.
Yes, we had a customer re pipe their whole house and they ran some of the pex in the attic. In extremely cold weather the master vanity plumbing would freeze. We framed up around those pipes and insulated it to the extreme and stopped that issue. I never heard them complain about it over heating but that makes sense it could be a problem. I’m about to research re plumbing for a couple of customers so this is good information.
Thanks