We're in plan check now, sort of a bureaucratic purgatory where the city building and safety office reviews your architectural and engineering drawings against a byzantine mosaic of applicable building codes to see what bizarre contortions you will have to go through to achieve a home. Sometimes, the codes are about building safely. Other times, I learned, they are about something altogether different.
My first encounter with Building and Safety (which from now on we'll simply call BS) came shortly after the fire. In the first few moments when I began to allow myself to dream of a real future for the house, I recalled a brilliant plumbing innovation I had learned about 8 years ago while writing for This Old House magazine called Pex.
Pex is a system of flexible hose that does the same job as the rigid (and now extremely costly) copper pipe most commonly used in Los Angles area homes, but with s
ome significant advantages. Let's
review each system briefly, so you can see what insanity drives the LA BS.
With a copper system, the water comes into the house through a single big pipe which then narrows and branches in a continuous steam throughout the house to reach each sink, shower, ice-maker, and toilet appliance you have. from the main street valve, each length of pipe must be cut and fit, with corners and tee joints, like a giant erector set,
each length carefully aligned and inserted through holes or notches cut in precise alignment into the joists, and then each fitting individually fluxed and heated with an acetylene torch before being soldered together. Every time a pipe path turns, it diminishes the overall water pressure through the system, so the whole system must be carefully designed to maximize strait pipe runs. Additionally, careful consideration must must be given to the distance between the hot water heater and each appliance, because to draw hot water when turned on, each appliance must draw all the standing cold
water from the pipes first. We all know the experience of waiting for the shower to warm up and thinking to ourselves what a waste of water it is. That's because the hot water heater is usually located close to the kitchen, which is the most frequent hot water draw in the house, and further from the showers, which could be anywhere in relation.
Copper replaced galvanized steel as the metal of choice for household piping in the last 25 years or so, as galvanized tends to rust over time, restricting water flow, causing leaks, and contaminating the water supply. Copper does neither, was easier to put together (soldering is faster than fitting threaded joints), and was, in its time, less expensive. In the last few years, however, the price of copper has more than tripled, making it very costly to use (and, in a brilliant stroke of the Law of Unintended Consequences, improving the lifestyle of thousands of homeless people who scavenge and resell scrap copper).
Pex, on the other hand , is a very different beast. To visualize a pex system, think of a hose bib, that spigot you use to water your lawn with a garden hose. Pex pipe is almost exactly like a garden hose, except it doesn't break
or leak and lasts 25 years or more. to repipe, say a sink, with pex, you run two long lengths of flexible pex hose through the walls from hose bibs near your water main and water heater to the hot and cold spi
gots on the faucet. the hose is totally flexible, like electrical wire, and can twist and turn as many times as you need without effecting flow pressure. Instead of measuring pipe, aligning holes, and soldering all day, you simple drill holes in the joists more or less at the same height, start at one end, and thread the pipe all the way through the house to the appliance just like you thread a tent pole through a tent. Your mother-in-law could do it.
Now imagine a single pipe, a foot long, with, say, eight bibs coming off it. That's called a manifold and in a pex system, you hook up as many of those as you need close to the hot and cold water sources (each sink, for
example, would need one bib from the hot supply and one from the cold), and run a hose to each appliance. This design is called a "home run" and though at first seems less efficient than an integrated whole house
design, is in fact much more so.
First, pex hose is much cheaper than copper, so you can use more of it for the same overall cost. Second, there are no fittings or soldered turns needed, saving all sorts of time and toxic materials. the hose is attached to fittings with a simple crimping tool that takes about 20 seconds per fitting or less. Third, as I mentioned, you can repipe a typical house in a day. And last, and this is the beauty part, you save a ton of water. Instead of needing to empty the standing cold water out of the entire house every time you turn on a hot spigot, you only have to empty the direct run from the hot water source to the appliance you are using, hoses that are varying diameters depending on the amount of water they need (you would have a bigger hose going to a bathtub, for instance, than to a powder room sink).
Cheaper, faster, more reliable, more efficient, and more earth-friendly. Seems like a no-brainer, eh?
Well, it certainly seems so to most of the world, which has been using Pex in everything from residential construction to office skyscrapers for 20 years without any complaints (there are some urban myths about mice liking to eat the hose, but none have been substantiated, and if a leak does occur, it is simpler to repair than copper, too). In seismic zone, like LA, flexible pipe dramatically decreases earthquake damage by virtually eliminate temblor-caused leaks common to rigid pipe, and in fact, there are thousands of buildings in Los angeles that are piped just this way.
But no longer, a fact I discovered when i called the Plumbing desk at BS back in February. As i recall, the conversation went something like this:
ME: Hi, is Pex pipe approved for use in Los Angeles?
Plumbing Desk Supervisor: Nope.
ME: Really? why? It's been in use around the world for 20 years, is cheaper, more efficient, more earth friendly, and more earthquake proof. Why wouldn't LA approve it?
PDS: Good question.
ME: Is there an answer?
PDS: Well, they used to approve it, but no longer. In fact, there are thousands of building in LA that have it with no problems.
ME: Then why not now?
PDS: they changed the rules.
ME (getting a little frustrated by his obvious reticence): Why??
PDS: Honestly?
ME: YES, HONESTLY.
PDS: Politics.
ME: huh?
PDS: The plumbers union and the metal companies make a lot of campaign contributions. There's no other reason you shouldn't be able to use it. In fact, you should go ahead and do so. I did. My son and I laid out the whole thing on my front lawn and repiped the house in a day.
ME (incredulous): Are you, the head guy on the plumbing desk at BS, telling me to go ahead and use an non-permitable and unapproved plumbing system in my home? (I might not have been this obvious, but you get the idea)
PDS: Yup.
ME: And you're telling me that you did this on your own house, without a permit?
PDS: Yup. Who's gonna know?
ME: Wow. Wow. I'm recovering from a fire. Won't they have to inspect the plumbing before we drywall?
PDS: Oh. In that case, you're shit out of luck.
I may have simplified this conversation, but not by much. The guy in charge of plumbing permits, a nice guy really, basically told be to ignore building codes and permit requirements and do the sensible thing, just like he did, unless, of course, you think you'll get caught. And these are the guys who now sit in judgement of our architectural plans and are the last barrier to having sweaty men crawling on our property.
Something tells me that the permit process will soon give new meaning to the term roto-router, with me on the prison-shower end of things.
