ASK This Old House _ Beer, Barrel, Disposers (S18 E8) FULL EPISODE
**Replacing Polybutylene Pipes with PEX Tubing: A Step-by-Step Guide**
Today on *Ask This Old House*, we visited a home in Virginia built in the 90s with a type of pipe that could burst and flood the house. The culprit? Polybutylene (PB) pipes, which were popular in the mid-70s due to their flexibility and ease of installation. However, over time, these pipes were found to have failing connections and a tendency to rupture, leading to water damage. By 1995, PB pipes were outlawed, but many homes still have them.
The homeowner, Deb, had experienced issues with her pipes after a plumber revealed the presence of PB pipes during a winter when her pipes froze. Richard, the host, brought a sample of PB pipe to demonstrate its flaws. He explained that while PB was once seen as an innovative solution, it was eventually banned due to its failure rate.
Travis, a local plumbing contractor, joined the team to help replace the problematic PB pipes with modern PEX tubing, which is cross-linked polyethylene (PEX). This tougher and more durable material has been used in radiant floor heating systems for decades and is now widely accepted for potable water use. Richard emphasized that while both PB and PEX are plastic, they have different chemical compositions—much like the difference between steel and tin.
To demonstrate the durability of PEX, Richard used a heat gun to soften a piece of PB pipe, showing how easily it could be pulled apart. In contrast, when he softened a piece of PEX tubing, it remained intact due to its cross-linked molecular structure, which makes it resistant to splitting or breaking under stress.
The team accessed the crawl space beneath the house to begin the re-piping process. They discovered that most of the fixtures were on the first floor, making the job more manageable. Richard explained that PEX tubing would be installed throughout the house, with only minimal damage to the interior due to the unfinished crawl space.
Travis ran new PEX tubing from the crawl space to the bathroom on the second floor, installing fittings and sleeves on the outside of the tubing. The team used a special tool to expand the inside dimension of the tubing, creating a tight seal when the fitting was inserted. This method ensured a water-tight connection without the need for soldering or glue.
By replacing the PB pipes with PEX, Deb’s home is now protected from future leaks and damage. Richard noted that many homeowners are unaware they have PB pipes until it’s too late—often during a home inspection or when a leak occurs. With proper installation, PEX can last up to 100-150 years.
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**Choosing the Right Drop Cloths for Your Next Paint Job**
Next, Maro and Ross tackled the topic of drop cloths, discussing the best options for protecting your surfaces during painting projects. They visited a local home center to evaluate the various options available.
Maro explained that there are different types of drop cloths depending on the job. For heavy-duty exterior work, such as scraping paint from a house, they recommended using a thick, durable tarp made of polyethylene. This type of cloth is water-resistant and can be reused multiple times, making it ideal for outdoor projects.
For interior painting jobs, Maro suggested using canvas drop cloths with a plastic backing. These are designed to absorb paint spills while preventing the liquid from penetrating through to the floor or furniture below. He emphasized that paper-based drop cloths should only be used as a secondary layer under canvas to ensure maximum protection.
The team also discussed the importance of selecting the right thickness and size for your project. For example, thin polyethylene sheets (around 4 mil) are suitable for temporary use or covering plants during yard work but are not recommended for painting due to their slipperiness and lack of durability.
Maro concluded that the best approach is to layer drop cloths—using paper along the baseboards and canvas on top—to achieve a clean, crisp line and protect your surfaces from paint splatters.
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**Indoor Air Quality: Understanding Pollutants and Solutions**
Richard and Tom explored the critical issue of indoor air quality (IAQ), revealing that the air inside most homes is two to five times more polluted than outdoor air in major cities. This is due to tightly sealed buildings, which trap harmful pollutants from cleaning products, paints, furniture, and even cooking fumes.
The team demonstrated various air quality monitors that measure different pollutants, such as particulate matter (PM2.5), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), carbon dioxide (CO2), and humidity. They explained how these devices can help identify problematic areas in your home and provide actionable insights to improve IAQ.
Richard highlighted the importance of mechanical ventilation systems like Heat Recovery Ventilators (HRVs) or Energy Recovery Ventilators (ERVs). These units exchange stale indoor air with fresh outdoor air while retaining heat or coolness, ensuring a constant supply of clean, breathable air. He also discussed how modern building practices, such as spray foam insulation and air barriers, have reduced air leakage but can also contribute to poor IAQ if not balanced with proper ventilation.
Tom shared his experience with a newly built home that felt sluggish and had mold issues until an HRV was installed. He stressed the importance of monitoring air quality and ventilating effectively, especially in tightly sealed homes.
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**Fixing Squeaky Doors: A Step-by-Step Solution**
Finally, Kevin O’Connor and Tom Silva demonstrated how to fix a squeaky door hinge. The homeowner, Deb, had been woken up at 4 a.m. by the loud noise every time she opened her front door. The team identified several potential causes of the squeak, including misaligned hinges, worn-out pins, and gaps between the barrels of the hinge.
Kevin showed how to test each hinge by pulling out the pin and observing its movement. He found that the top hinge was bent and not aligned properly, causing excessive wear on one side. To fix it, he demonstrated:
1. **Lubrication**: Apply multi-purpose oil or dry graphite lubricant to the hinge pins.
2. **Alignment**: Adjust the position of the hinge pin to ensure proper alignment and reduce friction.
3. **Replacing Hinges**: If hinges are bent or damaged, replace them with new ones.
By addressing the misalignment and ensuring smooth operation of the hinge, the squeak was eliminated, leaving Deb’s son with a peaceful night’s sleep.
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**Conclusion**
*Ask This Old House* provided viewers with practical advice on replacing outdated plumbing systems, selecting the right drop cloths for painting projects, improving indoor air quality, and fixing squeaky door hinges. The show also highlighted the importance of staying informed about home improvement trends and products to ensure safety, efficiency, and comfort in your living space.
Whether you’re tackling a major renovation or small DIY project, *Ask This Old House* offers valuable insights and tips to help you achieve professional results. Be sure to check out their streaming app for even more episodes and expert guidance!
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: entoday on ask this old house this house in virginia was built in the 90s with a type of pipe that could burst and flood the house i'll tell you what it is and how we fix it i'll cover your choices for drop cloths and we'll share more home inspection nightmares this is just a mess of wires and the only thing i can say is at least they use the junction box you hear that this door is really squeaky i'll show you a few different ways to make it quieter and i'll explain what indoor air quality is and how to improve it and these pollutants are coming from everywhere the cleaning products under our sink paints carpets furniture are you deb i am hi richard welcome to richmond it's nice to be out i don't think i've ever been in the city before it's beautiful thank you i'm so glad you're here how long you been here i built the house in 1991 and the reason i emailed you is because about a year ago in the winter my pipes froze and when the plumber came he went under the house and came out and said you have polybutylene pipes and i'm not going to touch them you had no idea you had pb i didn't i got your email i brought a sample of this this was the this was the pipe that was the craze in the mid 70s it was polybutylene it was flexible you could fish it anywhere the connections were easy to make but they found that over time the connections could fail and the pipe could actually fail and so by 1995 it was outlawed so what you built this in 91 yes so you were right at the end of the era of polybutylene and they used to do it in a couple of different places in the country one was the pacific northwest and the other was right here the mid-atlantics so i'm sure a lot of your neighbors have this stuff too yes they do and once i learned what i have i talked to several neighbors and they've had their pipes replaced as well because uh they had some failures of the pipe inside the walls that they didn't know about and then some of them they had leaks that they actually saw that's the thing these fittings can be up inside the wall and just drip drip drip insidiously you wouldn't even notice it so really the only way now is to get rid of it so what we've done is we've actually found a local plumbing con is going to help us get that old pb excellent travis should be here i hope yes he is come on in this house is beautiful inside too deb i love it thank you richard and there's our friend travis how are you sir good how are you you got a little jump on us in here i did and you know this thing couldn't be any easier to re-plumb good we have an unfinished crawl space here which allows us to access everything from underneath without doing minimal damage in here which is not the typical case i've seen these jobs where you've got a bathroom over here and a washing machine up here and you end up opening up walls and ceilings and it's really painful so take us through how you're going to attack this thing okay we're going to start over here in our kitchen uh we're going to access it through the bottom of the cabinet here good mm-hmm we have our ice maker over here which we'll access up through here okay two down two down uh like i said most of our fixtures are on this floor great we have our laundry room here which we can access from our crawlspace nice nice and our first floor bathroom here okay full bath here so that just comes up through the floors great but there's a bathroom above us yes sir there is so you can see oh here's the pb right here dab so it doesn't actually look too bad at some the better connections of the two that they had but so you'll be able to actually re-pipe this entire house with only open up just what we see right here yes sir that's pretty amazing let's get the water turned off i'm ready all right all right richard here's our crawl space store crawl space we don't have a lot of those where i come from yes sir everything here in richmond is typically a crawl space i'll let you go in yes sir what do we got okay what we have here is our polyethylene line that comes from the street and that's good news because that's the type of plastic we don't have to change so we don't have to dig up your front lawn great thank you our main shutoff which then transitions to the pb right all right so you ready to shut that off right now yes sir all right water's off i see an outside faucet here i want you to throw that in the bed over there okay water's coming on all right so we're going to go open up the faucets inside break the vacuum okay richard we're going to begin tearing things out all righty all right so here is the polybutylene we're taking out of the building flexible seems terrific and here's what we're putting back in this is a pex tubing cross-linked polyethylene pex why would you take out one plastic pipe and replace it with another plastic pipe you know although they look similar they are not the same this is a tougher pipe and it's been proven in the world market since the 70s it's been used for radiant floor heating first and for all those years it's put into concrete slabs and it gets heated and it gets cooled and it really isn't a tough environment and it lasts and it's been safely used for 25 years in the united states for potable water you know when i mention metal to you right you know the difference between steel and tin you know steel is stronger with plastics we all lump them together and really there's a different chemistry inside of each one of these so the best way to test them is to take them back to really the way where they were when they were first manufactured this amorphous state so i've got a heat gun right here and this is made up of oil based resins hydrogen and carbon that when we heat them up it start it'll start to soften it okay so now it's softened now now watch what happens when i pull it apart it has very little sidewall resistance and it just pulls apart like taffy okay yeah so that's a simple plastic this is the pecs and what's happened is those molecules that used to be just long strings are now cross linked much like a chain link fence let's see how it's turned clear now very clear so now unlike the simple plastic if i give extraordinary pull watch how much harder it is to pull this apart it's as if i've cut it with a knife all pipes are not created equal isn't that something it really is the pipe is only part of the story let me show you the fitting connection now you can watch this old house and ask this old house anytime anywhere download our new app to stream full episodes to your tablet your tv and your phone binge classic episodes catch up on recent renovations and get step-by-step help projects all around the house best of all it's free the most trusted home improvement information is now available on your amazon fire tv roku apple tv ios and android devices download the thistle house streaming app today travis has run new pecs to replace the polybutylene from the crawl space to the bathroom on the second floor and now he has to make some connections with fittings for those pex sleeves are installed on the outside of the tubing this tool will expand the inside dimension of the tubing and the sleeve the expanded tubing allows the fitting to stick inside but only for a few seconds because the tubing and the sleeve have a memory and will return to their original dimension which makes a water-tight connection well this was a very good day in another couple of hours you're gonna get the water back on right absolutely and deb all you'll have is a few drywall repairs and a little bit of paint touch-up oh i can take care of that thank you you know this really was a great reminder for a lot of people you know many people like you have pb pipe in there they don't even know it until it either leaks or they go to sell the house and the home inspector tells them so but you're in good shape for the next 100 150 years all right oh thank you for coming to richmond it was my pleasure he did all the good work thanks my friend thank you good job catch you later we see our fair share of crazy things from home inspectors all across the country they send them to us so we share them with you and we have a little bit of fun along the way who's first oh i'm not even sure where to start with this heath is first i mean looks like dinner at least they use the junction box but it is it's a big spaghetti mess of wires into this small container and wire nuts everywhere there's no way you can close that up how many are you allowed in something like that maybe four or five depending on the actual size so they're only over by four or five times plenty they are oozing out walk in the line yeah check mine out real estate listed built-in irrigation system is that y'all work no we have one pipe two everywhere three four five six off of one spigot yeah it's pretty incredible and what's the red tape for oh to plug the leaks oh nice just a little handy tie well that's good but talk about leaks look at this huh there's a slate roof plate roofs are difficult to patch but when you patch them it's really a method you're supposed to put a piece of copper flashing down put the slate in bend it up that stops it from dropping down but this way the duct tape takes six is everything it's a lot easier you know you don't have to buy the copper you don't have to take the time i love the old world craftsmanship of slate and duct tape you know duct tape i use it for my sneakers to hold them together but this guy use it that makes that tub absolutely waterproof for at least 27 minutes that's beautiful is that really cool is that wrong in a funny way it isn't terrific well we love getting them and we love having fun with them so if you've got a home inspection nightmare and a picture send it to us we'll have a blast with it taking a tub richard you take a top one want to tackle all your home improvement projects with confidence join this old house insider a new streaming service from this old house the iconic emmy-winning series that inspired a generation of home enthusiasts stream over 1 000 episodes of this old house and ask this old house commercial free watch it all in the this old house app and join live online q and a's with our experts best of all you can try insider free for seven days to join go to this old housemembership.com okay maro a lot of drop cloths on the shelf at the home center we got to pick the right one for the paint job what do you think we're going with canvas straight up well if you're going to canvas this is what we don't use painters usually don't do this usually for i mean we can use for prep work but most of the time what we're using is this one head cabin it's canvas packed it has a plastic here even if we have like a paint accident it won't go to the surface so we like canvas because it can absorb spill paint but you like it backed so that the paint doesn't go all the way through and ruin the carpet of the floor just want to make sure that we have no accidents at all all right so with no backing just for the scrapings and the prep absolutely what do you got here well this one is also a canvas but it has this product that sticks to the floor and is good for staircase and cabinet oh yeah like little rubber nubs huh that won't slip so i go to the home center i haven't seen that but when i see these things i'm thinking man that's expensive and the plastic here the even the thick stuff this is a lot cheaper exactly but we use using only this for outside we use for cover plants and shrubs pack up at the end of the day throw it away you don't use this on the ground when you've got a ladder and you're working outside absolutely not why not it's slippery uh okay slippery so outside for the thick stuff yeah that's what that means that's what's what that's four millimeter four mil yeah and then so does that mean that the thin stuff you use inside the tan stuff is the stuff that i like to use to cover furniture and cover uh everything inside the room when it's furniture and so this is for covering again not under foot not on the foot absolutely not what about the big blue guy here okay this blue guy is excellent to use on the exterior projects when you're scraping the house a heavy scraping you tied up that on the wall and everything that falls into the stop put it in a trash bag you can clean it you can wash it and we'll be ready for many other projects but don't use it when you're actually doing the painting on the exterior on the floor absolutely not the things i don't know paper paper i like to use this paper once we paint the room with lots of baseboards i like to run the layer paper all along the baseboards and then i'll leave like four or five inches off and i still put my drop cloths on top of them so canvas on top of the paper and you're using this because you want a nice tight line that you can cut this crisp line that's like you know make it cool beautiful well i now know what brush to pick and uh obviously what drop cloth do you want to know which drop cut to use interior and next year thank you maro you're welcome hey ross hey richard hey what are you guys working on talking about indoor air quality today cool you know buildings need to breathe when i first got in this business they breathed plenty you know they breathed at a rate of 10 to 12 air changes per hour that needs like a full stop to make people understand that like all of the air in the house leaves 10 12 times an hour that into 60 minutes every five minutes you have the whole house completely emptied out and replaced because everything leaks so much that's a lot of breathing right so nowadays what are we seeing nationally the average is seven air changes and code in massachusetts for new construction is three you know that's because of spray foam and air barriers you know we're getting away from the traditional building materials we used to use to use so how bad is the enduro air quality as a result inside this house it's the ultimate sort of petri dish this hamper really where stuff is trapped and people don't realize that the air inside most houses is two to five times worse than any air you're going to find on a busy city street because it's trapped that's depressing absolutely indoor air is dirtier and these pollutants are coming from everywhere the cleaning products under our sink paints carpets furniture i mean cooking people like me yeah i talk a lot a lot the gas range the oven right those are all giving off chemicals so these gadgets that i'm looking at here are they going to tell me what i've got in the air and how bad it is so these are a variety of different monitors that have different sensors so this one does co2 right where we're breathing out it does temperature it does relative humidity this one for example is doing vocs particulate matter those are the particulates that are really really small you can't see that you can actually inhale get into your lungs into your bloodstream so we don't have a device that tells us everything that's in the air breaks it down you need a device to go looking for a particular thing you're picking specific things you've got to decide what you want to monitor and find the right device for it so once this thing tells me i have too much co2 or what was it voc vocs or a particular matter what do i do with it well you got to ventilate you know a building needs to breathe but it doesn't need to breathe through every door and window it needs to have a set of lungs and if i was talking about a set of lungs be a box something like this either called an hrv or an erv so how it works is that you've got this core in the middle and now stale air that would leave the building from bathrooms or contaminated air would pass this way with a fan across this core and to outside but the very same time another fan brings exhaust outside air in across this core in the opposing direction so imagine this here in the winter it's rich with temperature and it goes wants to leave to outside it would have just gone outside now the cold air picks up the heat that's in the exiting air and it keeps the energy inside the building so you keep the energy inside the building but exhaust the fresh air exhaust the stale air out of the building we've seen those before i get it i put one of these things on my wall which i have not seen before what does it do does it beep and say turn on or alarm or so yeah some of them will just give you a visual indicator but like a light right that changes colors some of them will actually talk to your phone so we'll actually send you a notification or i'll actually give you a graph that shows you when you have any actually a better air quality and so here's the main screen for one of them i can see three different pollutants particulate matter vocs and carbon dioxide i can also see temperature and relative humidity in the space and here i'm actually seeing them over time so here's an event where our particular matter actually spiked to 251 caused by and that was caused by the gas range being on without the exhaust fan running at the most basic level you could crack a window or run an exhaust fan when you see this but where it's going is that these devices now are talking to these devices or other exhaust fans like a smart thermostat that's right right now it doesn't automatically behind the scenes so what do you guys think new normal are we going to be seeing a lot of these well i think you have to everybody's going to watch it the buildings are only getting tighter and the last thing i'll say about this is i built a new house what 15 years ago super tight with all the foam insulation tight windows and i didn't have one of these for the first year and what happened is we always felt sluggish and mold formed everywhere and then we put it in and it just changes it's an intangible that you can't really transfer until you live with it just to have fresh air in the building it just changes the way you live in space cool all right guys well good information thank you thank you so which one measures methane that one does yeah so i really appreciate you coming by tom my pleasure the uh our house was built in the 1940s we bought about four years ago my wife my parents and i we completely gutted the entire place brand new plumbing yeah brand new plumbing uh electrical wall board insulation we did the kitchen ourselves hung the cabinets the counters you did it all even the tile even the tile work yeah it's been a process it's a lot of work a lot of work but very rewarding yeah i mean look what you've done it's beautiful yeah thank you uh one thing that is driving me insane are these doors uh my two-year-old son lives down the hall here we sleep here and our coats and to feed the cat in the morning i wake up at four o'clock in the morning to go to work yeah and when i go down the stairs i have to open the door oh i hear that that squeak at four o'clock in the morning is it's like a it's like an air raid siren so wake your sun up wake smoke yeah wakes them up no problem well you know there's a lot of well that is loud there is a lot of reasons why a hinge can squeak and one of them is alignment it could be a line misaligned from the door to the jamb or hinge to hinge and if i look right up at this top hinge right here you can see that these barrel alignments aren't right on have you tried anything at all yeah i've tried different types of lubricants but to be honest a week couple weeks a month later the squeak just keeps coming back yeah so what's happening is they could be wearing and back and forth and when the lubricant wears out it starts to squeak sure so what i want to do is i want to take some of the stress off of one hinge at a time and to do that i'm going to knock the pin out all right so it's still squeaking a little bit you can also see how this hinge pin holds the hinges together right when i pull that out the door dropped down sure all right so i'm going to knock this one in just a little bit okay put it back all right i just put that one in there loose now go after the second one that hinge pin came right out not a lot of stress on that right pretty quiet though yeah it quieted right down let's put it back in and see if that but i also don't have this one all the way down yeah still pretty quiet yeah so it could be this one right here that hinge pin is not down all the way so i don't even know if i have to do that bottom one let me see if i tap it back down see if we get the squeak back so i think it's a top hinge and i think it has to do with the alignment of the barrels right here that i showed you but let me show you on a hinge over here okay now you said you've tried some lubricants yeah all right so if i was dealing with a squeaky hinge like that the first thing i would grab is some multi-purpose oil right here that you get at the hardware store or the home center and what you'd want to do is you want to pull the hinge pin up just a little bit and take a couple of drops and put it right on the side just like that okay and let that flow down put a little drop there a little drop here a little drop here all right and then drive the pin back and move it back and forth yeah i tried that uh it lasted a couple weeks but it squeak came back all right so you tried that so the next thing i would do is i'd pull out the pin all together and take some of this lubricant right here it's a dry graphite and i just squeeze a little of the powder down the hole there okay maybe even shoot a little bit up from the bottom take the pin put it in a little bit lubricate the pin and drive it down and push it back and forth to wear it in yeah i tried that it did work a lot better than the multi-purpose lubricant but after a couple weeks it just didn't do the trick okay well i think it's an alignment problem right here as i pointed out on the door okay and also the gap spacing between each hinge so look right here if i move this one see how it's moving up and down from one another that creates a gap for the hinge to flow easily without any resistance sure and i think by that barrel on your door there because the barrel is out of alignment there may be too tight on one side okay so what i want to do first is try to see if we can align that while it's on the door all right sounds great so let me show you this hinge right up here if you look at this bottom one it's bent in like that yeah okay so again we have the gap on this side but not on that side and you go up higher we've got a gap here but not here sure and this top one actually looks like it's bent yeah yeah so what i want to do is i want to remove this pin and see if i can knock it back in place okay okay so now that pins out so i'm going to take the pin and i'm going to try to use that to bang this over just a little bit do the same thing on the bottom see if i can straighten it just a hair this one's got to go over a little bit all right let's close the door pick it up a little bit and get this pin in all right let's try it sweet silence all right so i think your son will be able to sweep now thank you very much i really appreciate it my pleasure sweet silence indeed nice job so how often do you see that is that common to have a hinge bent like that well i mean those are inexpensive hinges so the metal is really soft and you could bend that if you drive the pin down too hard with your hammer or if the hinges apart and you drop it on the floor that could bend it just a little bit too get what you pay for right exactly all right well that's it from us keep your letters and your emails coming we'd love to hear from you so until next time i'm kevin o'connor and i'm tom silva for ask this old house thanks for watching this whole house has got a video for just about every home improvement project so be sure to check out the others and if you like what you see click on the subscribe button to make sure that you get our newest videos right in your feedtoday on ask this old house this house in virginia was built in the 90s with a type of pipe that could burst and flood the house i'll tell you what it is and how we fix it i'll cover your choices for drop cloths and we'll share more home inspection nightmares this is just a mess of wires and the only thing i can say is at least they use the junction box you hear that this door is really squeaky i'll show you a few different ways to make it quieter and i'll explain what indoor air quality is and how to improve it and these pollutants are coming from everywhere the cleaning products under our sink paints carpets furniture are you deb i am hi richard welcome to richmond it's nice to be out i don't think i've ever been in the city before it's beautiful thank you i'm so glad you're here how long you been here i built the house in 1991 and the reason i emailed you is because about a year ago in the winter my pipes froze and when the plumber came he went under the house and came out and said you have polybutylene pipes and i'm not going to touch them you had no idea you had pb i didn't i got your email i brought a sample of this this was the this was the pipe that was the craze in the mid 70s it was polybutylene it was flexible you could fish it anywhere the connections were easy to make but they found that over time the connections could fail and the pipe could actually fail and so by 1995 it was outlawed so what you built this in 91 yes so you were right at the end of the era of polybutylene and they used to do it in a couple of different places in the country one was the pacific northwest and the other was right here the mid-atlantics so i'm sure a lot of your neighbors have this stuff too yes they do and once i learned what i have i talked to several neighbors and they've had their pipes replaced as well because uh they had some failures of the pipe inside the walls that they didn't know about and then some of them they had leaks that they actually saw that's the thing these fittings can be up inside the wall and just drip drip drip insidiously you wouldn't even notice it so really the only way now is to get rid of it so what we've done is we've actually found a local plumbing con is going to help us get that old pb excellent travis should be here i hope yes he is come on in this house is beautiful inside too deb i love it thank you richard and there's our friend travis how are you sir good how are you you got a little jump on us in here i did and you know this thing couldn't be any easier to re-plumb good we have an unfinished crawl space here which allows us to access everything from underneath without doing minimal damage in here which is not the typical case i've seen these jobs where you've got a bathroom over here and a washing machine up here and you end up opening up walls and ceilings and it's really painful so take us through how you're going to attack this thing okay we're going to start over here in our kitchen uh we're going to access it through the bottom of the cabinet here good mm-hmm we have our ice maker over here which we'll access up through here okay two down two down uh like i said most of our fixtures are on this floor great we have our laundry room here which we can access from our crawlspace nice nice and our first floor bathroom here okay full bath here so that just comes up through the floors great but there's a bathroom above us yes sir there is so you can see oh here's the pb right here dab so it doesn't actually look too bad at some the better connections of the two that they had but so you'll be able to actually re-pipe this entire house with only open up just what we see right here yes sir that's pretty amazing let's get the water turned off i'm ready all right all right richard here's our crawl space store crawl space we don't have a lot of those where i come from yes sir everything here in richmond is typically a crawl space i'll let you go in yes sir what do we got okay what we have here is our polyethylene line that comes from the street and that's good news because that's the type of plastic we don't have to change so we don't have to dig up your front lawn great thank you our main shutoff which then transitions to the pb right all right so you ready to shut that off right now yes sir all right water's off i see an outside faucet here i want you to throw that in the bed over there okay water's coming on all right so we're going to go open up the faucets inside break the vacuum okay richard we're going to begin tearing things out all righty all right so here is the polybutylene we're taking out of the building flexible seems terrific and here's what we're putting back in this is a pex tubing cross-linked polyethylene pex why would you take out one plastic pipe and replace it with another plastic pipe you know although they look similar they are not the same this is a tougher pipe and it's been proven in the world market since the 70s it's been used for radiant floor heating first and for all those years it's put into concrete slabs and it gets heated and it gets cooled and it really isn't a tough environment and it lasts and it's been safely used for 25 years in the united states for potable water you know when i mention metal to you right you know the difference between steel and tin you know steel is stronger with plastics we all lump them together and really there's a different chemistry inside of each one of these so the best way to test them is to take them back to really the way where they were when they were first manufactured this amorphous state so i've got a heat gun right here and this is made up of oil based resins hydrogen and carbon that when we heat them up it start it'll start to soften it okay so now it's softened now now watch what happens when i pull it apart it has very little sidewall resistance and it just pulls apart like taffy okay yeah so that's a simple plastic this is the pecs and what's happened is those molecules that used to be just long strings are now cross linked much like a chain link fence let's see how it's turned clear now very clear so now unlike the simple plastic if i give extraordinary pull watch how much harder it is to pull this apart it's as if i've cut it with a knife all pipes are not created equal isn't that something it really is the pipe is only part of the story let me show you the fitting connection now you can watch this old house and ask this old house anytime anywhere download our new app to stream full episodes to your tablet your tv and your phone binge classic episodes catch up on recent renovations and get step-by-step help projects all around the house best of all it's free the most trusted home improvement information is now available on your amazon fire tv roku apple tv ios and android devices download the thistle house streaming app today travis has run new pecs to replace the polybutylene from the crawl space to the bathroom on the second floor and now he has to make some connections with fittings for those pex sleeves are installed on the outside of the tubing this tool will expand the inside dimension of the tubing and the sleeve the expanded tubing allows the fitting to stick inside but only for a few seconds because the tubing and the sleeve have a memory and will return to their original dimension which makes a water-tight connection well this was a very good day in another couple of hours you're gonna get the water back on right absolutely and deb all you'll have is a few drywall repairs and a little bit of paint touch-up oh i can take care of that thank you you know this really was a great reminder for a lot of people you know many people like you have pb pipe in there they don't even know it until it either leaks or they go to sell the house and the home inspector tells them so but you're in good shape for the next 100 150 years all right oh thank you for coming to richmond it was my pleasure he did all the good work thanks my friend thank you good job catch you later we see our fair share of crazy things from home inspectors all across the country they send them to us so we share them with you and we have a little bit of fun along the way who's first oh i'm not even sure where to start with this heath is first i mean looks like dinner at least they use the junction box but it is it's a big spaghetti mess of wires into this small container and wire nuts everywhere there's no way you can close that up how many are you allowed in something like that maybe four or five depending on the actual size so they're only over by four or five times plenty they are oozing out walk in the line yeah check mine out real estate listed built-in irrigation system is that y'all work no we have one pipe two everywhere three four five six off of one spigot yeah it's pretty incredible and what's the red tape for oh to plug the leaks oh nice just a little handy tie well that's good but talk about leaks look at this huh there's a slate roof plate roofs are difficult to patch but when you patch them it's really a method you're supposed to put a piece of copper flashing down put the slate in bend it up that stops it from dropping down but this way the duct tape takes six is everything it's a lot easier you know you don't have to buy the copper you don't have to take the time i love the old world craftsmanship of slate and duct tape you know duct tape i use it for my sneakers to hold them together but this guy use it that makes that tub absolutely waterproof for at least 27 minutes that's beautiful is that really cool is that wrong in a funny way it isn't terrific well we love getting them and we love having fun with them so if you've got a home inspection nightmare and a picture send it to us we'll have a blast with it taking a tub richard you take a top one want to tackle all your home improvement projects with confidence join this old house insider a new streaming service from this old house the iconic emmy-winning series that inspired a generation of home enthusiasts stream over 1 000 episodes of this old house and ask this old house commercial free watch it all in the this old house app and join live online q and a's with our experts best of all you can try insider free for seven days to join go to this old housemembership.com okay maro a lot of drop cloths on the shelf at the home center we got to pick the right one for the paint job what do you think we're going with canvas straight up well if you're going to canvas this is what we don't use painters usually don't do this usually for i mean we can use for prep work but most of the time what we're using is this one head cabin it's canvas packed it has a plastic here even if we have like a paint accident it won't go to the surface so we like canvas because it can absorb spill paint but you like it backed so that the paint doesn't go all the way through and ruin the carpet of the floor just want to make sure that we have no accidents at all all right so with no backing just for the scrapings and the prep absolutely what do you got here well this one is also a canvas but it has this product that sticks to the floor and is good for staircase and cabinet oh yeah like little rubber nubs huh that won't slip so i go to the home center i haven't seen that but when i see these things i'm thinking man that's expensive and the plastic here the even the thick stuff this is a lot cheaper exactly but we use using only this for outside we use for cover plants and shrubs pack up at the end of the day throw it away you don't use this on the ground when you've got a ladder and you're working outside absolutely not why not it's slippery uh okay slippery so outside for the thick stuff yeah that's what that means that's what's what that's four millimeter four mil yeah and then so does that mean that the thin stuff you use inside the tan stuff is the stuff that i like to use to cover furniture and cover uh everything inside the room when it's furniture and so this is for covering again not under foot not on the foot absolutely not what about the big blue guy here okay this blue guy is excellent to use on the exterior projects when you're scraping the house a heavy scraping you tied up that on the wall and everything that falls into the stop put it in a trash bag you can clean it you can wash it and we'll be ready for many other projects but don't use it when you're actually doing the painting on the exterior on the floor absolutely not the things i don't know paper paper i like to use this paper once we paint the room with lots of baseboards i like to run the layer paper all along the baseboards and then i'll leave like four or five inches off and i still put my drop cloths on top of them so canvas on top of the paper and you're using this because you want a nice tight line that you can cut this crisp line that's like you know make it cool beautiful well i now know what brush to pick and uh obviously what drop cloth do you want to know which drop cut to use interior and next year thank you maro you're welcome hey ross hey richard hey what are you guys working on talking about indoor air quality today cool you know buildings need to breathe when i first got in this business they breathed plenty you know they breathed at a rate of 10 to 12 air changes per hour that needs like a full stop to make people understand that like all of the air in the house leaves 10 12 times an hour that into 60 minutes every five minutes you have the whole house completely emptied out and replaced because everything leaks so much that's a lot of breathing right so nowadays what are we seeing nationally the average is seven air changes and code in massachusetts for new construction is three you know that's because of spray foam and air barriers you know we're getting away from the traditional building materials we used to use to use so how bad is the enduro air quality as a result inside this house it's the ultimate sort of petri dish this hamper really where stuff is trapped and people don't realize that the air inside most houses is two to five times worse than any air you're going to find on a busy city street because it's trapped that's depressing absolutely indoor air is dirtier and these pollutants are coming from everywhere the cleaning products under our sink paints carpets furniture i mean cooking people like me yeah i talk a lot a lot the gas range the oven right those are all giving off chemicals so these gadgets that i'm looking at here are they going to tell me what i've got in the air and how bad it is so these are a variety of different monitors that have different sensors so this one does co2 right where we're breathing out it does temperature it does relative humidity this one for example is doing vocs particulate matter those are the particulates that are really really small you can't see that you can actually inhale get into your lungs into your bloodstream so we don't have a device that tells us everything that's in the air breaks it down you need a device to go looking for a particular thing you're picking specific things you've got to decide what you want to monitor and find the right device for it so once this thing tells me i have too much co2 or what was it voc vocs or a particular matter what do i do with it well you got to ventilate you know a building needs to breathe but it doesn't need to breathe through every door and window it needs to have a set of lungs and if i was talking about a set of lungs be a box something like this either called an hrv or an erv so how it works is that you've got this core in the middle and now stale air that would leave the building from bathrooms or contaminated air would pass this way with a fan across this core and to outside but the very same time another fan brings exhaust outside air in across this core in the opposing direction so imagine this here in the winter it's rich with temperature and it goes wants to leave to outside it would have just gone outside now the cold air picks up the heat that's in the exiting air and it keeps the energy inside the building so you keep the energy inside the building but exhaust the fresh air exhaust the stale air out of the building we've seen those before i get it i put one of these things on my wall which i have not seen before what does it do does it beep and say turn on or alarm or so yeah some of them will just give you a visual indicator but like a light right that changes colors some of them will actually talk to your phone so we'll actually send you a notification or i'll actually give you a graph that shows you when you have any actually a better air quality and so here's the main screen for one of them i can see three different pollutants particulate matter vocs and carbon dioxide i can also see temperature and relative humidity in the space and here i'm actually seeing them over time so here's an event where our particular matter actually spiked to 251 caused by and that was caused by the gas range being on without the exhaust fan running at the most basic level you could crack a window or run an exhaust fan when you see this but where it's going is that these devices now are talking to these devices or other exhaust fans like a smart thermostat that's right right now it doesn't automatically behind the scenes so what do you guys think new normal are we going to be seeing a lot of these well i think you have to everybody's going to watch it the buildings are only getting tighter and the last thing i'll say about this is i built a new house what 15 years ago super tight with all the foam insulation tight windows and i didn't have one of these for the first year and what happened is we always felt sluggish and mold formed everywhere and then we put it in and it just changes it's an intangible that you can't really transfer until you live with it just to have fresh air in the building it just changes the way you live in space cool all right guys well good information thank you thank you so which one measures methane that one does yeah so i really appreciate you coming by tom my pleasure the uh our house was built in the 1940s we bought about four years ago my wife my parents and i we completely gutted the entire place brand new plumbing yeah brand new plumbing uh electrical wall board insulation we did the kitchen ourselves hung the cabinets the counters you did it all even the tile even the tile work yeah it's been a process it's a lot of work a lot of work but very rewarding yeah i mean look what you've done it's beautiful yeah thank you uh one thing that is driving me insane are these doors uh my two-year-old son lives down the hall here we sleep here and our coats and to feed the cat in the morning i wake up at four o'clock in the morning to go to work yeah and when i go down the stairs i have to open the door oh i hear that that squeak at four o'clock in the morning is it's like a it's like an air raid siren so wake your sun up wake smoke yeah wakes them up no problem well you know there's a lot of well that is loud there is a lot of reasons why a hinge can squeak and one of them is alignment it could be a line misaligned from the door to the jamb or hinge to hinge and if i look right up at this top hinge right here you can see that these barrel alignments aren't right on have you tried anything at all yeah i've tried different types of lubricants but to be honest a week couple weeks a month later the squeak just keeps coming back yeah so what's happening is they could be wearing and back and forth and when the lubricant wears out it starts to squeak sure so what i want to do is i want to take some of the stress off of one hinge at a time and to do that i'm going to knock the pin out all right so it's still squeaking a little bit you can also see how this hinge pin holds the hinges together right when i pull that out the door dropped down sure all right so i'm going to knock this one in just a little bit okay put it back all right i just put that one in there loose now go after the second one that hinge pin came right out not a lot of stress on that right pretty quiet though yeah it quieted right down let's put it back in and see if that but i also don't have this one all the way down yeah still pretty quiet yeah so it could be this one right here that hinge pin is not down all the way so i don't even know if i have to do that bottom one let me see if i tap it back down see if we get the squeak back so i think it's a top hinge and i think it has to do with the alignment of the barrels right here that i showed you but let me show you on a hinge over here okay now you said you've tried some lubricants yeah all right so if i was dealing with a squeaky hinge like that the first thing i would grab is some multi-purpose oil right here that you get at the hardware store or the home center and what you'd want to do is you want to pull the hinge pin up just a little bit and take a couple of drops and put it right on the side just like that okay and let that flow down put a little drop there a little drop here a little drop here all right and then drive the pin back and move it back and forth yeah i tried that uh it lasted a couple weeks but it squeak came back all right so you tried that so the next thing i would do is i'd pull out the pin all together and take some of this lubricant right here it's a dry graphite and i just squeeze a little of the powder down the hole there okay maybe even shoot a little bit up from the bottom take the pin put it in a little bit lubricate the pin and drive it down and push it back and forth to wear it in yeah i tried that it did work a lot better than the multi-purpose lubricant but after a couple weeks it just didn't do the trick okay well i think it's an alignment problem right here as i pointed out on the door okay and also the gap spacing between each hinge so look right here if i move this one see how it's moving up and down from one another that creates a gap for the hinge to flow easily without any resistance sure and i think by that barrel on your door there because the barrel is out of alignment there may be too tight on one side okay so what i want to do first is try to see if we can align that while it's on the door all right sounds great so let me show you this hinge right up here if you look at this bottom one it's bent in like that yeah okay so again we have the gap on this side but not on that side and you go up higher we've got a gap here but not here sure and this top one actually looks like it's bent yeah yeah so what i want to do is i want to remove this pin and see if i can knock it back in place okay okay so now that pins out so i'm going to take the pin and i'm going to try to use that to bang this over just a little bit do the same thing on the bottom see if i can straighten it just a hair this one's got to go over a little bit all right let's close the door pick it up a little bit and get this pin in all right let's try it sweet silence all right so i think your son will be able to sweep now thank you very much i really appreciate it my pleasure sweet silence indeed nice job so how often do you see that is that common to have a hinge bent like that well i mean those are inexpensive hinges so the metal is really soft and you could bend that if you drive the pin down too hard with your hammer or if the hinges apart and you drop it on the floor that could bend it just a little bit too get what you pay for right exactly all right well that's it from us keep your letters and your emails coming we'd love to hear from you so until next time i'm kevin o'connor and i'm tom silva for ask this old house thanks for watching this whole house has got a video for just about every home improvement project so be sure to check out the others and if you like what you see click on the subscribe button to make sure that you get our newest 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