Just wanted to vent and share my frustration from yesterday.
I purchased my house about 2 years ago, but it was built in 86. So alot of the plumbing in this house is Qest Polybutylene (yep, the stuff with all the lawsuits in the 90s). I have already redone my water/laundry room and swapped alot out, so the majority of it is contained within the access hole (house in on a slap no basement), with the exception of a line that runs to my kitchen sink and a line to my bathroom sink.
Unfortunately this piping is also used to run from the OWB to my baseboards : /. i have 2 zones, so 2 lines run from OWB to house, then 2 from downstairs to upstairs, then 2 from upstairs to downstairs, and finally 2 back to the OWB.
I got up a little before 6am yesterday and went to the bathroom. I could hear water running, so i tracked down the noise to under the bathroom sink (this is where both zones enter the house). I found that the Qest fitting that attached the Polybutylene to copper for one zone had cracked and burst open just like they are known to do. AND not only did it break, but since this stuff is no longer used it was damn near impossible to find a new one. I finally found that this stuff was used in alot of mobile homes, so i had to track down a mobile home supply house to find them.
It was a huge mess, thankfully the one that burst was in the bathroom. Since the OWB was installed when the house was built the lines run through the concrete slap itself, so replacement of all lines would be a major pain! After this though maybe i'll at least try to replace the lines that run between floors. For now i just bought a stock of fittings from the mobile home supply house in case it happens again.....