Sandy basement polybutylene swap and hose bib

We got called out to a property in Sandy because the homeowners were remodeling their basement and knew they still had polybutylene pipe. That stuff was used a lot in the ’80s through the late ’90s, and even back then it started giving people trouble. There was a big lawsuit that put the manufacturer out of business and left millions of homes stuck with it. We run into it regularly at Mountain Man Plumbing, and Sandy is a real hotspot because so many houses there were built right when that was the go-to material.

While the basement was open we replaced about forty-five feet of the polybutylene that was going to get finished over, and we tied the new PEX back into the water heater loop so everything stayed solid. That was the meat of the job—getting the questionable pipe out before the walls closed up.

We also changed out the outdoor frost-free hose bib while we had access, and we replaced a questionable saddle valve that was clamping onto the line and piercing it to feed the ice maker. Those little clamp-on valves are never our favorite, so we put in a proper ice maker shutoff while we were already there. Water went back on, we checked for leaks, and the remodel could move forward with better pipe and cleaner shutoffs in place.