# ABS is less than desirable



## skoronesa (Oct 27, 2015)

Roughly 35 years old. Heat damage for sure. All the cracking is above the boiler piping and in a chase where the heat collects.

I show up and there's a puddle by the boiler and the customer had turned the water off. I turn the water on a touch and the 3/4" copper has a pin hole spraying the ceiling above the boiler. I replace the section and some charkbite couplings from a previous repair and turn the water on. I tell the customer to run the faucets and flush the toilets to check that everything was working and to get the air out.

They flush a toilet and it just starts pouring above the boiler. My first thought was the pipe got stressed when some hack put in the ada tub and clearly did a schit job on the drain. The 3"x1-1/2" wye cracked through the hub, but also after that and after a 3" 45 the pipe cracked all the way around leaving the 45 with some stubs just hanging.

I think the heating and cooling cycles cause the pipe to rip itself apart. My guess is the inner and outer layers of abs expanded at a different rate than the foam core.

There were 3 complete breaks in the basement and the pipe running to the second floor cracked completely through just above the floor and just below the ceiling. Most of the cracks that ran longways were only on the inner layers of the piping but with minimal movement cracked all the way through. The cleanout above the water heater also cracked.

*I think the same would happen to foam core PVC.*

I have seen schedule 40 pvc in this same situation and it handles it great. But no one uses foam core pvc around here so my guess is that solid core won't rip itself apart from differential expansion.


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## ShtRnsdownhill (Jan 13, 2016)

that pipe be fuked up.....hey its crack pipe.....


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## The cable guy (Oct 31, 2020)

Like your signature says... white is right😁


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## Debo22 (Feb 15, 2015)

I’ve never seen PVC drains in person. All we use is ABS


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## skoronesa (Oct 27, 2015)

Debo22 said:


> I’ve never seen PVC drains in person. All we use is ABS


I know you guys don't need much heat but you ever seen this?

What amazed me was the longitudinal splintering. I've seen plenty of abs crack circumferentially before, almost never seen it crack like this, much less at this scale.

The really baffling part is this house was used up until about a month ago with zero issues. I am sure the cracks have been forming for a long time but for all of it to finally give up the ghost like this is pretty amazing. I guess once one cracked the entirety was no longer supported like it would have been and some sections pulled on other sections.

I've been in this basement before and I know everything was hung just fine, plenty of hangers and no built in stress. Like 5 years ago the main waste line to the tank clogged and the whole system was full and didn't break even when I pulled a toilet and snaked it.

Very interesting.


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## Debo22 (Feb 15, 2015)

skoronesa said:


> I know you guys don't need much heat but you ever seen this?
> 
> What amazed me was the longitudinal splintering. I've seen plenty of abs crack circumferentially before, almost never seen it crack like this, much less at this scale.
> 
> ...


I don’t see fittings crack much at all. Usually it’s right at the joint just outside the hub.


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## The cable guy (Oct 31, 2020)

I saw this once it was a kitchen sink line split from the sanitary tee for the waste arm to all the way to the turn it took in the crawl space. It was 2’-3’ long 2” no idea how it happened


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## hewhodigsholes (Oct 28, 2020)

My old house had ABS drains. The only things that broke were the joints where it left the house, usually the hub snapped off the fitting. The house was definitely shifting, and there were several corners cut in its construction. 

My understanding is that ABS is has less flexion than PVC, which makes it "tougher" and more rigid. I believe it's generally less dense as well. PVCs flexibility is what keeps it from breaking under strain.


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## Master Mark (Aug 14, 2009)

abs pipe is junk anyway, and you claim that this is foam core abs???

We never used the stuff and it feels light and cheap compared to pvc pipe
It was outlawed around here back in the 70s because of it being so flammable

What their is still around here I have seen a few stress cracks in ABS. fittings

I wonder what they were pouring down those pipes.... maybe it was a drain for a meth lab........


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## skoronesa (Oct 27, 2015)

The cable guy said:


> I saw this once it was a kitchen sink line split from the sanitary tee for the waste arm to all the way to the turn it took in the crawl space. It was 2’-3’ long 2” no idea how it happened


Probably all the boiling water from pasta night.


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## hewhodigsholes (Oct 28, 2020)

skoronesa said:


> Probably all the boiling water from pasta night.


You are probably correct. Being less flexible also means it will be prone to cracking under thermal stress, especially since ABS has a fairly low heat capacity and transfer rate.


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## skoronesa (Oct 27, 2015)

Master Mark said:


> .............I wonder what they were pouring down those pipes.... maybe it was a drain for a meth lab........


An old couple built the house in the early eighties, their children never lived with them for long at all in this house and they retired about 10 years after it was built. The husband died 10 years ago and the wife just died 2 months ago. I assure they were not pouring anything improper down the drain. They've always used us for service and* I've never known them to even use drain cleaning chemicals.

The cracking was confined to the are affected by the heat from the boiler. *In fact if you look at the 2nd picture you will see a joist behind the grey bucket. The pipe goes through that joist and has zero cracking on the other side of that joist. It then continues 55'+ where it picks up another bathroom and then leaves the foundation. All of that piping is fine.


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## hewhodigsholes (Oct 28, 2020)

This is the part where I out myself as someone who went to engineering school, graduated, and passed the license exam, then decided the money wasn't worth it and became a plumber. 😁

I'm ready to take my lumps now.


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## Debo22 (Feb 15, 2015)

There was a class action lawsuit a while ago because some ABS pipe would crack at the glue joint. The pipe has been corrected since then.








ABS Pipes


ABS Pipes Result: $70 million settlement Year: 1998 ABS pipe is rigid, black, non-pressurized plastic pipe used to drain sinks, tubs, showers, toilets, washing machines and dishwashers commonly used in residential construction as waste, drain, and vent pipe. In the ABS pipe class actions, we...




www.lieffcabraser.com


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## skoronesa (Oct 27, 2015)

Debo22 said:


> There was a class action lawsuit a while ago because some ABS pipe would crack at the glue joint. The pipe has been corrected since then.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



What did they supposedly change?


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## Debo22 (Feb 15, 2015)

skoronesa said:


> What did they supposedly change?


Some sort of resin in the pipe made it fail


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## skoronesa (Oct 27, 2015)

Debo22 said:


> There was a class action lawsuit a while ago because some ABS pipe would crack at the glue joint. The pipe has been corrected since then.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


There's a very old B&B around here that was mostly repiped in abs about 30 years ago. Many of the repairs since then were also done in abs. When they renovated 15 years ago and 5 years ago they put in more abs. This place has abs from many decades and unfortunately they get lots of cracks, mostly in areas where the heat congregates. Because it was expanded several times over a 100 year period up until ~1990 it's a varitable hodge podge of everything you can imagine.

Almost 10 years ago they started sticking me in that place for service, mostly because the 6" cast iron waste line from the 20's was finally failing and I started snaking the place several times a year. My name became synonymous with their's in the office so any plumbing issue they had I was sent.

I have been working hard since then to replace as much of the old cast iron, clay, galv., and abs with pvc as I can.


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## skoronesa (Oct 27, 2015)

Debo22 said:


> Some sort of resin in the pipe made it fail


Sounds to me like they finally admitted the cheap plastic they were using was too cheap so they switched to something stronger and more expensive. I know most of the abs we get is abs/abs/pvc coex with the pvc lining on the inside. The stuff I just used last week though was abs/pvc/abs coex where the pvc was used as the foam core.

I know almost all of the abs I find older than 10 years is either solid abs ~pre-2000 or abs/abs/abs coex. Didn't start seeing abs coex with pvc layers until the past ~5-10 years.


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## skoronesa (Oct 27, 2015)

Debo22 said:


> There was a class action lawsuit a while ago because some ABS pipe would crack at the glue joint. The pipe has been corrected since then.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I just looked at that lawsuit, maybe my customers piping has this issue. I don't recall exactly what year the house was built. I will certainly inquire. 

Thanks for the heads up.


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## Tango (Jan 13, 2018)

skoronesa said:


> I know you guys don't need much heat but you ever seen this?


Yes a place where they did massages, they put essential oils down the sink drain, took 1 year for the cell core to crack in thousands of pieces. The foam has capillary action where the pipe is cut and sucks all the acids and deteriorates from the core.


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## The Dane (Feb 19, 2015)

Around here in the cold its a known issue that the drain line to a kitchen will have a tendency to crack along the pipe when it is ABS. Its believed to be because its a cold exterior wall and hot water from the KS going down it so expand/contract with big temp differences. My boss just finished up a remodel of his own house and since he has ABS pipe he decided to replace the ABS drain from the kitchen sink to PVC because of this issue. Nothing was wrong with his drain but the wall was accessible now so as a preventative measure he decided to replace it. Just from the sink and down the wall and as soon as it was in the exposed basement he connected to the old ABS again as it is only an issue we tend to really see in that cold exterior wall where it takes hot water from the kitchen.

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