Beef Up Your PEX IQ
“Location, location, location” is still a mantra murmured by property buyers and sellers alike. Whether you are a house flipper or a home buyer with new dreams for an old house, it’s a good idea to do your homework.
Learn about the neighborhood and get yourself a top-of-the-line home inspector who speaks honestly and bluntly. A verbal misunderstanding can lead to some nasty surprises once you get into the firestorm of remodeling.
There are so many home construction innovations available to the DIYer or professional, and it behooves you to visit home shows, search the Internet, take classes, subscribe to trade magazines and talk to people well weathered in the biz. Some good basic information will help you factor in remodeling costs accurately and help you find the best solutions for your problem areas.
Among the recent superstars in home renovation is flexible PEX tubing, cross-linked polyethylene hosing that makes plumbing overhauls less of a headache. Not only is it flexible and lightweight, it is more cost-effective than copper by a long shot!
Hosing made of PEX supplies DIYers with options that were not readily available to renovators in the U.S. before the 1980s. The tubing can be used in radiant floor heat systems and water supply manifold units. It can be threaded into tight places in older homes that never had double sinks or a spa shower off the master bedroom or washer-dryer unit in the upstairs hall closet.
Because it is so flexible, PEX can make directional changes easily, eliminating the frequency of coupling joints or soldering - greatly reducing the risk of leakage. (For instance, a 3/8- inch hose can be bent into a tight 4-inch radius.)
PEX supply stores are available across the country with sophisticated websites with digital photos, how-to videos, product descriptions, pricing and user-friendly shopping cart pages. Hardware stores and local PEX supply enterprises offer that face-to-face conversation that DIYers might need to figure out what is right for their particular renovation project.