Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Are Polybutylene Pipes found in home in Colorado Springs an issue?

Polybutylene Pipe Question:
I had an interesting question come up today about the polybutylene pipes action lawsuit in reference to a home we have listed for sale. The home is http://www.4646kashmire.com/ It was built in 1997. Since it was built past the date to qualify for the lawsuit doesn't this mean the pipes should not be an issue in the home and shouldn't they be covered by the home warranty? (see http://www.pbpipe.com/ for more info on the lawsuit)

1 comment:

  1. Hello Kathy. John Griffith here from Plumbing Express. I read your question and have personally seen this scenario play out many times before. I've been in the polybutylene replacement business for just over 10 years now and the company I work for has been replacing polybutylene for just over 20 years. With that I can tell you that the date of construction isn't necessarily important here, at least as it relates to the polybutylene piping. As you may know polybutylene was essentially banned in 1995 as a result of the class action settlement you mentioned in your original post. Unfortunately some contractors, builders, plumbers, etc still had the product stocked in their warehouses and continued to use the piping until the simply ran out. You see in most cases there were no immediate modifications made to (local & national) plumbing codes prohibiting the use of the pipe so even though the manufacturers pulled it off the shelves in the US, many contractors continued to use it until they ran out of stock. I've actually seen this quite often in the multifamily market where contractors buy in bulk more often than not. The unfortunate reality however is that even though the pipe was installed after the settlement makes no difference regarding the defective nature of the material used to manufacturer the pipe. We've actually included some of this information on our website at www.polybutylene.com and feel free to email me directly at jgriffith@plumbing911.com if you have any follow up questions.

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