# Kitec Blowout!!



## plumber666 (Sep 19, 2010)

My boss, gotta love the guy (cheap bugger..). 
6 or 7 years ago, we did this big high end retail/residential project on the lakeshore of a nearby town. It was plumbed in Kitec PEX/AL/PEX, the new best water pipe ever!! Yeah right.
We ended up having a ton of this crap left over, enough that when the boss built his dream summer home/cabin on the lake/mansion, he used Kitec on it.
The cabin has been finished for a couple of years, and the boss went up there mid last week to fine tune his radiant heating system. Called me on Thursday, he'd been working in his mechanical room when he literally just brushed against his 3/4" Kitec cold water header, and the outlet of a 3/4x1/2 brass tee blew right off the tee. Like snapped off. 
He said where the brass came apart, it looks all black inside. Can't wait to see this tee next week. I told him what I've heard about Kitec, and why it was pulled off the market. 
Now he's reall worried about his little cabin on the lake/dream retirement home.


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## Tommy plumber (Feb 19, 2010)

Your boss is going to have a few sleepless nights thanks to Kitec.....:sweatdrop:


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## Redwood (Sep 8, 2008)

Yea, In Canada they kept using it long after the class action lawsuit happened here...

I thought is was because you guys have different water north of the border... :laughing:

I remember watching a Mike Holmes show where they were ripping out all the existing plumbing and doing it right putting in Kitec... :whistling2:


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## Phat Cat (Apr 1, 2009)

I think I would be worried about the high-end project he did. Things like that can bankrupt a company.


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## U666A (Dec 11, 2010)

I worked for a smaller excavation/residential lot servicing contractor as a laborer about 100 years ago, and I was responsible for bringing the San/storm and water services from the mains into the basement. Sewers were always either ABS, or SDR, and water service was generally 3/4" type K, with some cities requiring 1" poly. 

Only problem was, if it was a big basement, or one that we started later in the day, or had trouble finding the services... Etc. Sometimes we could not get inspection until the following morning.

This became a problem when copper hit $4/lb. They were climbing into the excavation and breaking off the service as close to the curb stop as they could, even if the pipe was charged.

Enter Kitec...

I would go out to the lot with the same 100' roll and install with the SS sleeve, into the corporation curb stop, and roll it out into the basement with a hose bibb... Biggest PITA was the tracer wire that went along with it.

I worked there about a year after kitec came to town and installed literally a couple hundred of these services. As I've been led to believe with what I have read today, there should not be a problem with these services, should there?

Everything I have read says to me that only the brass fittings were the source of failure, not the pipe.


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## Tommy plumber (Feb 19, 2010)

How old are you?!


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## ToUtahNow (Jul 19, 2008)

I believe Kitec got a bad deal in this whole thing. It was not their pipe that failed, it was their yellow brass fittings. It was the same yellow brass many of the other manufactures were using not just PEX fittings but for everything in plumbing.

When Kitec started to have problems in the Las Vegas Valley they started an investigation. They found the water in the area was incompatible with the yellow brass. Kitec had their fitting manufacturers making a bunch of bronze fittings and swapped them out for free to all of the plumbers in Vegas. At the same time they started designing their new plastic fittings and pulled all of the yellow brass fittings from Vegas.

The actual failures in the fittings were almost non-existent compared to how many fittings were installed. However, once the Class Action was filed there was a feeding frenzy of out-of-State Contractors flooding into Las Vegas. They were selling Kitec repipes using scare tactic and it worked. Most of the repipes they were selling were in the retirement communities and there were a ton of those. Because of the frenzy, IPEX decided to pull Kitec off the market.

Mark


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## ToUtahNow (Jul 19, 2008)

Just as a quick example of non-Kitec yellow brass failures in Las Vegas.

Mark


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## RealLivePlumber (Jun 22, 2008)

And they drink that water............


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## Tommy plumber (Feb 19, 2010)

RealLivePlumber said:


> And they drink that water............


 



What's wrong with that? They won't need to take a vitamin, they're getting the USDA's recommended dose of: zinc, copper, lead, antimony, etc...:laughing:


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## U666A (Dec 11, 2010)

Tommy plumber said:


> What's wrong with that? They won't need to take a vitamin, they're getting the USDA's recommended dose of: zinc, copper, lead, antimony, etc...:laughing:


Mmmmm... I love the smell of antimony in the morning...

Oh, and I'm not THAT old, I just use 100 years as an expression to depict an era a long time ago, which exact dates I cannot recall...


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