TDT Plumbing is known for pushing in-place pipe repair forward as they’ve pioneered epoxy pipe coating and cured in-place pipe repair. Now, TDT is pushing forward again with Picote pipe lining. It’s a resin lining breakthrough, and there’s a lot to know about it. And that’s why we’re joined by TDT Plumbing’s Gary Gould.

Gary, in a nutshell, what exactly is Picote pipe coating?

Picote is a relatively new technology in application. It’s a applicator. And so, what we’re able to do now is address types of pipes that maybe other applications are not able to line or pneumatically coat. And it’s basically a brushing on system, a system of coating inside of pipes, epoxy using a brush application.

Picote is as much a description as the name of it.

Correct.

Okay. How does this process differentiate? I mean, what is the difference? This is a resin-base process. How is that different?

Well, the resin is very similar. Epoxy coatings have long been characterized for anti-corrosion, anti-erosion, and basically a way to seal the inside of lines and prevent leaks, prevent contamination and leeching of metals into water. But the Picote itself is an application of spinning that resin and laying a coating inside of a round tube.

And what’s nice about it for us is it hits diameters of pipe that sometimes are a little too small for lining, using the CIPP process, and sometimes they’re too big for using, let’s say, our e-pipe technology. Because it’s done, it’s just in stagnant pressure. It doesn’t need high volumes of air. It’s just a easier way to get epoxy into certain types of pipes.

What I see, the way you’re describing it, is it’s like a set of brushes that are spinning, and as it’s spinning, it’s pushing this resin out onto the pipe.

That is correct. We have a canister of resins. It’s a two-part epoxy that mixes, and it’s pumped to a head, and then this head just spins at a fairly decent RPM, and as it’s spinning, we can use a video camera and we can watch how it applies and it fills all the nooks and crannies, and basically completely coats the inside of the pipe.

And we will put multiple coats. We’ll build a base over two or three or even four coats in order to get a nice, thick, smooth coating on the inside of the pipe.

It sounds to me like you push it all the way through, and then you pull it back as you do this. Is that right?

Absolutely. Really, the difficult part is that we got to come in and we get the line very, very clean, and we descale it. All of this is done using this equipment with various attachments. We can heat the lines, and then, if we need to, we can sandblast. But then you install the delivery apparatus all the way in, and you start that epoxy mixing. And then once you start coating, as you’re pulling back, you’re able to see the resin bundled up and as you pull back, you’re applying that coating.

And it certainly helps you from getting all your equipment all gooey by going to the opposite direction. If we pushed in, it would all get resin everywhere.

Yeah, that would… Man, I could see where that would be difficult. What is the difference, then, Gary, between Picote and e-pipe? Because it sounds like they’re both using an epoxy resin.

Right. The end result is very, very similar. Both are applying an epoxy to the inside of a tube or a pipe, sealing it, preventing corrosion, erosion, et cetera. But the differences are the e-pipe epoxy, we do much smaller pipe; three-eighths of an inch, half inch, one inch. And when you get to about three inches, it starts to get more difficult and it requires a heck of a lot of air.

The Picote system really, one-and-a-half or two inches, that’s as small as you can go. Now, it’s overlapping the technologies, but it doesn’t require high volumes of air. And then, when you get to two, three, four, six-inch, the Picote loves that environment, so we can do these bigger pipes, whether they’re sewer lines, whether they’re storm drains, whether they’re gas pipes or domestic water, drinking water pipes, that’s a good place for it. And we like those diameters, right? We, as in TDT Plumbing, we like this size because it’s used in buildings and homes and what-have-you.

But it sounds to me like the applications for this are more likely to be commercial and municipal, larger applications and not so much residential, though.

Well, it could be, and it depends. Domestic water lines for residential pipes are too small. But when you get into a building or you get onto a platform or you get into office building or condo complex, something that has that bigger pipe, it’s perfect with the application. If you’re doing sewer and drain lines, well, your home has three and four-inch; two, three and four-inch sewer and drain lines under it.

That’s a good application. It’s very strong in that application. We worked on a project down at NASA a few weeks ago, and it was the grease lines in one of their cafeterias. And those are two, three, and four, and even up to six-inch diameters. So, that’s a little bit of residential and then a little bit of commercial, all in one place.

It’s a whole lot of grease at NASA!

Oh, yeah. It was horrible. That place has been in business, the cafeteria for, let’s say, 60 years.

I was going to say, well over 50!

Yeah. So, you’re at 60 years, and the four-inch pipes were 95%-plus clogged.

Oh, my. Yeah.

Clogged. You’re talking about, you could drop a pencil down the center of what was flowing, and that’s clearly why they were having so many problems.

That building is ready for a cath!

Yeah, they shut down the building, and I’ll tell you, you spend 80, 90% of your time cleaning and prepping to come in with the process that will take care of the pipe permanently, in a matter of hours.

I’m glad you said that, because my last question for you… This sounds like a great solution. But how long does it take? I mean, how long will a pipe be out of service with Picote?

Well, the less extreme conditions, we can come in in a half a day or morning, get the pipe clean, then apply the coating. We can apply the next coating within about an hour and a half, and if there’s a third or more coatings, we kind of space them out.

The return to service is as early as next day. So, depending on the environment, we have to understand downtime necessary for the client; we have to have access ready, so it has a very, very strong, fast return to service when you compare it to anything out there. Re-pipe, especially if it’s under a building or in a wall, it is fast. And we can put water on fast, so this is good in the environment where we have domestic water. Basically within a day or so.

This must be a very fast-curing epoxy, then, if it’s curing in that much time.

Yeah. It is a fast-curing. It’s similar to our e-pipe resin. All of these types of resins, between three to eight hours, and they can be back in service. We see those type of dry times.

It’s definitely application-specific. We look at the parameters around the project just to make sure that we have everything in line and ready. But one of the things we did in a recent project down at a power plant, on a domestic water line, is we force-cured it by adding warmer air onto the product. One of the things that we’re able to do is kind of manipulate and get the resin to cure a little quicker by blowing 120-degree air on it, rather than letting it sit at 70 degrees for six hours.

We can speed that curing time up. It’s very, very nice and easy to work with, and that’s one of the things that we like, being able to manipulate it and work with it well.

One of the advantages of working with TDT is Gary understands the DNA of this stuff, and can find those ways of innovating to push it forward and make the product work even better than maybe the manufacturer ever intended. You said now, Gary, that it’s similar to e-pipe epoxy, but different.

Correct. So, the e-pipe epoxy and those patented processes are performed in particular manner consistent with that process. This is completely different. Instead of being pneumatically blown in, again, it’s mechanically put on by brushing a spin-casting type method.

As far as that goes, it’s completely different application, and it bridges over to different-sized pipes that work well for us. But epoxies themselves are very characterized. Most epoxies are two or three-part epoxies; it is a two-part epoxy similar to e-pipe; different chemistry slightly, but very, very similar in many ways.

Those are some of the differences between the two technologies, and for us, we’re very excited about how we’re able to apply it in areas that, before, we had no chance. We couldn’t make the turns, or we couldn’t get into the lines. And it also brings sewer, storm, electrical conduit; it brings other types of pipes in that before, we were not able to do with e-pipe.

Like e-pipe, you’re creating a pipe within a pipe.

Absolutely. You’re sealing it off completely from the inside.

Picote pipe coating is a quick, simple, practical way to coat pipes, and TDT Plumbing has it available right now, as Gary has heard, and you’ve heard some actual applications of it. Gary, thanks for joining us!

Thank you, Charlie.

Learn more about Picote pipe coating and all of the TDT Plumbing pipe restoration options here at TDTPlumbing.com.

The post What is Picote Coating? appeared first on TDT Plumbing.

You have a plumbing problem. Leaking pipes, they need repair. Oh, and did I mention you’re 200 miles offshore in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico? This is a job for a team with special skills like the ones at TDT Plumbing that they bring to every job. Gary Gould from TDT Plumbing is with us here to explain how they handle projects like this and what it means to your home or your business.

GARY: Hi, Charlie.

CHARLIE: Gary, whether it’s in my house or an oil platform, isn’t a leaking pipe a leaking pipe?

GARY: Absolutely. One thing people don’t like is when your ceiling falls in or you have water on your electrical components. A leak is a leak is a leak and I don’t know very many that are good leaks.

CHARLIE: Right. So how does it differ when you’re … Like we were talking about this, where you’ve been on this offshore platforms 200 miles offshore. How does it differ in dealing with a leak like that?

GARY: For offshore leaks, clearly we have to keep into consideration travel and getting out there, usually by helicopter. Once you get everything to where you need to be, though, the leaks are very similar. A domestic water, cold or hot water leak, is a pin hole or it’s a bad fitting or connection or something like that; pipes corroded or eroded away. We saw those problems in the same exact fashion offshore as we would onshore. Whether we’re on a boat, whether we’re on a platform, whether we’re in a hotel or apartment complex or over at my house down around the corner, it’s very similar piping systems. And we fix them in a way that’s very similar.

CHARLIE: So what are exactly were some of the problems that you solved when you were on some of these offshore platforms?

GARY: On one very large production platform, they had failing stainless steel water lines. Just so happened to be the lines that supplied all of the living quarters, so your showers, your commodes, your kitchen. And, I’ll tell you, you have 100 persons out on a platform and the kitchen can’t operate because the pipes are leaking and shut off, people get ornery very quickly. So what we do is we go in and these systems that are failing … For a host of reasons, just failure of the pipe, we come in and isolate sections and restore them and then we don’t hear from them for a very, very long time.

So we’ve done domestic water lines. We’ve done fire water lines on a different platform. On boats, we’ll do tanks, like the big domestic water tanks, the plumbing and galvanize and steel pipes that connect everything together, ballast tanks. So there’s a whole lot of plumbing on offshore rigs and boats.

CHARLIE: And this is a job for ePIPE.

GARY: We definitely use our ePIPE or epoxy coated technology for the bulk of what we’ve done offshore.

CHARLIE: Are there other techniques you had to use out there?

GARY: We’ve used our cured-in-place pipes, which is a little bit different. It’s designed for bigger diameter pipes typically. And so we’ve used that technology as well.

CHARLIE: How does that differ from what you would use in hotels and homes on dry land, Gary?

GARY: There’s very little difference. Clearly offshore, the surrounding aspects are different because you’re floating like a bobber in the middle of the ocean, but the technology, the application and the crews that we use are the same. So we do the exact same thing at your house down on a cul-de-sac. We isolate things a little bit different when it’s a bigger building, 7, 10, 20 story building. But you basically are isolating sections of pipe. The diameters are the same. The use is the same and so from offshore to onshore, you’d be surprised at the similarities.

CHARLIE: We’re visiting with Gary Gould from TDT Plumbing. They’re experts in leak detection and in-place pipe restoration using the ePIPE epoxy repair and cured-in-place pipe repair. Their technologies they use in your home, your business and as we’re hearing today, out on the high seas. What is it like, Gary? I mean, to organize your team to get out there. It’s one thing if you come to a neighbor and you forget a part, you can send a runner for it. There must be an enormous amount of preparation for taking a crew to go out and repair something 200 miles offshore.

GARY: You bet. And I’ll tell you, it’s good for our company because we’ve had to go through Coast Guard for approvals to use the products offshore. So you have to go through a process. But when we are in preparation, we will mock-up things here at our shop. We have to load down containers and basically, work with the engineers and offshore personnel to bring together the package. And you look at that package and you look at, well, what could go wrong; what extra goodies do you plan on bringing? We really have to load down, prepare, have extra stuff, whether it’s floor protection or gloves. I mean, just right down to every nut and bolt.

And often these rigs have had previous leaks and so we find ourselves having to adapt to maybe what Joe the Plumber did or the maintenance man or something else. And then, what’s even more complicated is going from metric standards to English standards to different types of threads and fittings or whatever. So we really have to do a complete and thorough examination and mock-up up front. Then we move everything off in containers, get our job done, bringing it all home. It’s really neat to be involved in that stuff.

CHARLIE: The logistics of it is just mind boggling. I mean, it’s almost like a moon mission.

GARY: It is something else. I tell you, these guys that work offshore … The planning. We may plan a half a year or a year in advance in preparation to going out and as our company moves into the facility, our goal, of course, is to get in and get out. It’s all about taking everything that we’ve practiced and learned up front, to go in and be thorough, be precise, get our job done and get off the boat. It’s important for them. We try to be seamless where there’s no production loss whatsoever. We’ve been very, very successful in that.

CHARLIE: What have you learned with these offshore adventures of yours that’s impacted the projects that you do here on dry land? I mean, have there been takeaways that have changed your process or informed how you do things in homes and businesses on dry land?

GARY: Well, with our experience, clearly there’s a whole lot of folks that do general plumbing repairs here in Texas or here in Houston. And it’s a completely different approach. So we look about the methodology. We look at the process. We look all of the layers of safety. There’s a lot of safety involved. We take our products, we make sure that we’ve mocked things up and if unique circumstances, that we’re prepared to take care of those. When you come back to the states, I think when you walk into an apartment complex or tower or building, like an office building, it fits right in.

And I’ll tell you, as a homeowner, you want people to come in and be professional. Don’t want a bunch of people walking around not knowing what’s going on. And so the trickle down is nice, the communication is great, but it gives us a good process and a good procedure when we’re applying the product from the house to the office to the building. It’s great.

CHARLIE: TDT Plumbing is a full service plumbing company. They specialize in leak detection, re-piping, pipe restoration, cured-in-place pipe repair, and of course, the Jolly Roger work out on oil platforms offshore. Gary, thanks so much for your time today.

GARY: Thanks a bunch. Appreciate it.

CHARLIE: Before I forget, check out the rest of their website for videos and case studies of projects of every skill. You’ll find all that and much more here at tdtplumbing.com.

The post Plumbing Repairs on Boats and Offshore Rigs appeared first on TDT Plumbing.

Your drain slowed down. A mushy area appears in your backyard. The plumber says it’s a busted drain line. Now that means trenching, or does it? TDT Plumbing has an alternative technology that fixes the leak without digging a trench, and here to explain it all is Gary Gould with TDT Plumbing.

GARY:It does sounds too good to be true. What we do is bring into the home and into people’s backyards technology that’s been out for 30, 40, 50 years, and that’s restoring pipes in place. It’s putting a new pipe in that old pipe. For short, they call it CIPP, cured in place piping.

CHARLIE: It’s been around for 50 years? Where did it start?

GARY: I can’t tell you exactly where it started, but back in the ’70s, rehabbing pipes on a municipal scale, like out in the city street from manhole to a manhole. This is where the idea of fixing existing pipes started. I’m certain that the industrial sector also played a role with using an epoxy coatings and different forms of coatings on pipes to extend the lifetime of these systems. Over the years and in the last 15 or so, the technology has gotten where instead of doing a pipe that’s five-foot in diameter, how to do we deal with something that’s two inches or four or six inches? That’s a big deal. It’s making it small enough and compact it. We can come to your driveway and into your home and restore a pipe. Whereas, 30 years ago, you had to be able to drive a car through the pipe. It had to be so big, and the technologies just weren’t developed yet.

CHARLIE: You’re saying it’s harder to figure out how to do that in a small pipe than in a really big one.

GARY: Right. Because unless you can shrink yourself down to being very, very, very small, everything done within walls, under homes or foundations in buildings has to be done remotely. You’re doing it from an access that is maybe 100 feet away or 300 feet away. It’s a whole different way of making that the technology fit into that environment. Pipes are small, without a doubt. It’s a problem with size.

CHARLIE: This, Gary, is a form of trenchless repair.

GARY: It is a form of trenchless repair, and there’s two or three different ways to deliver that product.

CHARLIE: Right now we’re looking at cured in place pipe repair. How does this work? How does cured in place pipe repair actually work?

GARY: The process is simple. Typically we isolate a section of pipe. It is cleaned. It’s video inspected. We look for what’s going on inside. Usually maybe roots are growing into the line. You’ll hear about that from plumbers, “Hey, I got roots in the pipe. It’s causing back-ups.” We clear that stuff out, and then the process is to wet out what looks like a very long sock, and we wet it out with an epoxy resin. We install into that pipe, and then we use a balloon of sorts on the inside of it, and expand and blow the balloon up, and it will allow that new pipe on the inside of the old pipe to harden. Once it hardens, it’s very similar to putting a new PVC pipe into the old original cast iron or concrete type pipe. It might be in your drain line.

CHARLIE: It literally is a pipe within a pipe.

GARY: Absolutely.

CHARLIE: All right. We’re visiting with Gary Gould from TDT Plumbing. They’re experts in leak detection and in place pipe restoration using the epoxy repair method. Also, we’re learning today cured in place pipe repair. Gary, how long does a project like this take?

GARY: Typically when you’d find in a residential environment, we might spend a half a day or a day. I think what typically happens, we’ll take two, three, maybe four hours preparing the liner, getting it installed, and we allow that to dry for another three or four hours. Then, we remove parts of it, leaving the new pipe in place. For most homes, less than a day, but we have done projects in towers and buildings that may take months of doing a liner a day or a couple of liners per day.

CHARLIE: That’s important to note that this isn’t just residential. You do this in industrial settings, in multi-family settings, and much larger facilities than maybe even a house.

GARY: Absolutely. It’s a good fit because we can come in and do these things and often while somebody goes to work in the morning. You delivery your product, and then they come back, and they don’t even know that you’ve been there. It’s a good way to rehabilitate existing pipes during the day and keeping things nice and simple.

CHARLIE: Is this right for every kind of drain line? Are there situation where you go out to look at doing cured in place where it just doesn’t work?

GARY: Certainly. There are times depending on the fitting orientation, the system may be so far gone, it’s just passed the point of return of being able to save it. We have to do a little bit up front and investigating and understanding the configurations. Got to have some access to the line, and so at that point we make decisions. Does it make sense to look at a more cost-effective way of … you know, a hybrid. Some conventional repairs and then some CIPP repairs. That’s very common when it comes to plumbing systems and repairing them properly.

CHARLIE: Whether it’s a house, a business or anything. I guess the first step is calling you, and you’re going to send somebody out to evaluate the scene.

GARY: Absolutely. When it comes to sewer and drain lines, a video inspection of the inside of the pipe is critical. We got to really look inside of the fittings and how it’s configured, and map out where it’s at under a home. Often these lines go everywhere, and we just need to be able to say we’re going to do this segment from Point A to Point B, and know where it’s at so that when we come out to do the work, we’re ready to go.

CHARLIE: I imagine part of the savings in this cured in place process, Gary, is that you’re not going to be trenching a yard. You’re not going to have to replace landscaping. You’re not going to have that disruption you would have in trenching. Is the repair itself therefore a lot more cost-effective?

GARY: Often you’re going got see significant cost savings. When you look at for instance, let’s say a 20-foot section of pipe that’s under a house, well I’m here to tell you that an access pit and tunneling or breaking through the concrete foundation and having to tear up floors or carpets or whatever, this can get expensive. Having us come in on a Tuesday morning and removing a commode let’s say in a bathroom and then lining that section of pipe and leaving by that afternoon, you wouldn’t even know that we had been there. You’ve just saved a whole lot of aggravation and downtime, and there’s a lot of savings in that without a doubt. Cosmetic savings is a big thing when it comes to rehabilitating existing pipes.

CHARLIE: TDT Plumbing is a full-service plumbing company if you haven’t figured that out by now. They specialize in leak detection, re-piping, pipe restoration, and of course as you’ve learned today, cured in place pipe repair. Gary, thanks for your time today.

GARY: Thank you, Charlie. Appreciate it.

CHARLIE: Before I forget, be sure to check out that section of their website on cured in place pipe repair for a video showing the process in action. Find that and much more here at tdtplumbing.com.

The post Cured In Place Pipe Repair appeared first on TDT Plumbing.

Whether it’s low water pressure, rust in your water, or possibly even pinhole leaks, re-piping could be the answer for you. If you spend any time looking into re-piping, you’re going to hear about PEX. It’s a popular re-piping option and today, we’re going to learn all about PEX – what it is, how it works, and what’s involved in re-piping your home with it. Gary Gould is with us from TDT Plumbing. He’s an expert in leak detection, plumbing restoration, and re-piping.

GARY: Hey, thank you, Charlie.

CHARLIE: Let’s start with PEX itself. What exactly is PEX? Is PEX a thing or is a description? What is PEX?

GARY: You know, I think most people are going to say it’s plastic pipe, but what PEX stands for is polyethylene. It’s a type of plastic and the X on the end represents it being cross-linked. What you can compare that to is kind of harder type material plastics, but basically polyethylene, right?

CHARLIE: So, we have a plastic pipe that we’re going to be using in place of the galvanized pipes in our house?

GARY: Yep, galvanized or copper.

CHARLIE: Alright.

GARY: If you have a problem with old pipes, like we do in central Houston, or leaking pipes with copper or galvanized, PEX often is the plastic of choice.

CHARLIE: It certainly seems to be almost the Kleenex of re-piping. I mean, it’s the brand everybody thinks of, but it is a brand, right?

GARY: PEX is the product material.

CHARLIE: Okay.

GARY: But, there’s all kinds of brands, right? You have Uponor might be one style. There’s maybe dozens of manufacturers and they kind of all center in on how they connect the tubes. PEX is just your very … It’s like saying coffee.

CHARLIE: Okay, it’s the category.

GARY: The category, there you go.

CHARLIE: You talk about these pipes coming together. How does that work, Gary? How does this replace the plumbing system in the house?

GARY: Well, typically what you’re going to do is run a new line parallel, let’s say in the attic, next to an old line, and then everywhere there’s a T in the old line, you’re going to cut in a fitting in a T on the PEX pipe, and then you run … basically, you run a new branch line over and drop it down through the wall, string it through the wall and you drop it down to whatever water fixture there might be there, like a sink or something. Typically, that’s how it’s done. You’ll run a hot and cold line and just kind of mirror what’s existing, and then abandon the old pipe, and put in a new.

CHARLIE: I’m going to wind up having a collection of plastic tubes running through my attic where the plumbing used to be?

GARY: Often … Where it used to be or in the same general vicinity. It’s very difficult and very time consuming and so what you’ll see a lot of plumbing houses doing is it’s hard to completely remove the old pipe. Not only is it difficult to put in new pipe without having to create a bunch of accesses, because the galvanized or copper pipes were installed when the walls weren’t in, you know, early on in construction, it is extremely hard to pull that pipe out without having to cut a foot off, pull it up, cut another foot off, pull it up, cut another foot off, pull it up. Often, pipe is left where it lie and the new line is put around it.

CHARLIE: You talked about the connections where you put these together. Is there more than one kind of connection that is used to make these T’s and go down to the fixtures?

GARY: Absolutely. This is something for your audience to think about when a company comes in to position or sell a re-pipe using PEX because there are some folks that are going to use a brass or copper style fitting. You can also use various other snap together SharkBites, plastic type fittings. Each one of these is another level of install. When you put in that pipe, certainly it’s nice to anchor it down on walls, but if you anchor it, you usually have to make access so that you can anchor the PEX pipe to a stud or what have you. All of these things and how they’re connected really kind of different tiers of install. It’s the quality of that workmanship and how that pipe’s installed that you’re looking at. There’s all kinds of types of fittings out there.

CHARLIE: When you say the SharkBite one, that’s the one where it just clamps down on there and it causes the connection. The copper ones, I imagine, are more the high end. Do they work the same, Gary, or do you prefer one versus the other?

GARY: They’re very similar. SharkBites is a great technology it’s kind of and basically you slip your tube in it, your PEX tube and it grabs onto it. You can remove those also by pulling back a little clip ring. I, personally, six in one hand, half dozen in another, I like the metallic fittings. We like to, let’s say where the pipe comes out of a wall, put a 90 degree fitting that the PEX stops in the wall and then we use a copper tube that comes out. It’s much more like original. I like the look of it, personally. I think it’s a much better install. But clearly, there’s a dozen different ways to install pipe as long as we’re to code, we like the product, we let the customers decide if they want to go one direction or another.

CHARLIE: Back up a second here, so you’re saying that some installers will put the PEX in and just leave the plastic pipe coming out of the wall?

GARY: We don’t like to that ourselves at TDT Plumbing, but that’s the difference in maybe a higher quality installation, a little better workmanship, and maybe something that’s average or something along those lines. I, personally, at my own home, would not like to see either a blue or a red plastic pipe noodling out of the wall with a valve on it. I’d rather see something that you can put a nice discussion on, a little cleaner, and it takes a little extra time. The difference between the guy that comes in and does your house in two days and a guy that comes in or a company comes in and does it in four. You get the quality through the products that are being used. They have to be installed right. You don’t want to have to go through it another time and so let’s get the re-pipe right.

CHARLIE: Does it make a difference as far as how well it’s going to work, whether you use the PEX coming out of the wall or you use one of these connections? Does it affect how well it works, Gary?

GARY: I think water flow is not going to be much different whatsoever. I do think it’s important, though, having a flexible pipe, if you hit it, it may be more subject to damage or failure. I just think that over time, the better installation is going to have a little bit more quality parts. There’s a visual thing there, what you’re looking at, but also, we’re looking for a long term solution for whether you’re there for a long time or you resell the house. I think it’s a better package in the end.

CHARLIE: Now, we’ve talked a lot about PEX and that kind of product for re-piping in this method. Are there other processes that can be used besides PEX to do this kind of re-piping?

GARY: Oh sure. PEX is nice because it comes on a roll and I can carry it in, it’s light, it’s easy to manage when you can just throw in on your shoulder like an extension cord. But, there’s CPVC, which is another type of plastic that is certainly approved in the city of Houston and almost anywhere in the US, but that’s a 20 foot piece of pipe, it’s straight, it’s rigid. Let me tell you, you try to walk in a door with a 20 foot piece of pipe, it’s cumbersome. You can also re-pipe with copper. We happen to really like our epoxy coating technologies, e-pipe. That also is a great option and it’s the least intrusive of them all, but there’s certainly multiple types of pipes that can be used, and coding technologies.

CHARLIE: You said intrusion. Is that another way of saying “holes cut in my walls”?

GARY: Holes in your walls, absolutely. The problem with a re-pipe, conventional re-pipe, and I said this a little bit earlier is that, typically, these are done before you put the drywall up. The piping goes into the wall, you get your inspection, and then they cover it all up. In order to re-pipe it, you’ve got to get it into the wall. Often, the only way to get the pipe back into the wall is by cutting holes in it. The people that see the most damage are going to be two-story homes where the piping often is run between the first floor ceiling and second floor floor. Those guys, typically in that first floor ceiling, you’re going to see holes everywhere. It all depends on which way the boards are running and how it was installed the first time. The best time to pipe a house is when it’s new. As you re-pipe, you’ve really got to get create. Damage, wall damage, having to put drywall back and to re-paint or wallpaper, these are the things that are kind of your secondary costs when it comes to re-pipe.

CHARLIE: That’s not to say that PEX is not a good solution, it’s just one of the factors you have to talk into account when you consider doing a PEX re-pipe.

GARY: Absolutely. It’s a great solution. New homes today, we build homes every week of the year, and PEX is one of the pipes we use often. There are several ways to take care of plumbing problems and that’s one of them. It’s as good as any, but it has certain cosmetic aspects that surround it and what it takes is inviting us to come to your home, take a look at it, and then we can work together and say, “Hey, maybe this makes more sense. Maybe it’s more cost effective.” I don’t know about you, Charlie, but when you’re looking at a project, most often we’re driven by, “How do we save money?” That might be a great solution and if it is, we’re going to tell you that. There may be other options as well that are also great solutions and maybe more cost effective and will help you find that direction as well.

CHARLIE: Find that happy balance between cost and solution. You have a number of them as you say, right?

GARY: We sure do.

CHARLIE: You can learn more about PEX re-piping and all the plumbing restoration options available from TDT Plumbing on the website tdtplumbing.com. Gary, thanks for taking time to help us understand the PEX re-piping and as a re-piping option today.

GARY: Thank you, Charlie, appreciate it.

The post Should I repipe my home with PEX piping? appeared first on TDT Plumbing.

You have choices where re-piping your home is concerned. It’s possible, in fact, to restore the pipes you already have to better than new condition with a system called ePIPE and today we’re gonna learn about ePIPE. What it is, how it works and what you can expect from it. And to cover all that ground, we’re joined by Gary Gold with TDT Plumbing. He’s an expert in leak detection, re-piping and pipe restoration. He’s a recognized expert on ePIPE and he’s here to explain how it works.

GARY: Thanks Charlie.

CHARLIE: So, let’s start with ePIPE itself. What exactly is ePIPE?

GARY: ePIPE is an epoxy coating technology. So, the goal is to coat the inside of your pipes with a two part epoxy resin that will seal and harden inside of your old pipes.

CHARLIE: So, what we get now is almost a pipe within a pipe?

GARY: Absolutely.

CHARLIE: So, not only are we fixing the pipe, we’re also fixing all those connections along the way.

GARY: Absolutely.

CHARLIE: The thing that drives us, I imagine, would be leaks in the pipe.

GARY: Sure, there are several things that causes people to wanna go out and replace or repair or re-pipe their homes or it could be an office building or both, right? Could be anything, anything with pipes. So, pinhole leaks is a problem. You come home from a hard day at work and you’ve got water in your ceiling and drywall falls in. You have a pinhole leak. That’s usually the driving force. Pipes, the fittings, the connectors, older homes have galvanized steel pipe and those are threaded and often you’ll have rusty water and you probably experience where you go on a trip, come back to your house, you turn on the water and it’s long horned orange, right? It’s nice and rusty.

CHARLIE: Perish the thought.

GARY: And that’s exactly why people say, “Hey, we need to do something about this. My white clothes are rusty clothes.”

CHARLIE: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

GARY: Or, “I have a leak, it’s causing damage and ruined my hardwood floors.” And so that’s where we come in with the technology.

CHARLIE: So, these are problems not just for a home but you could have this in an office building, an apartment complex, anywhere and this ePIPE technology will work in all those places.

GARY: We use it in anything that you’d consider pressurized pipes. So, it’s domestic water primarily, so hot and cold water piping systems. So, the guys that use the most water and have the most high volume use are like hotels, schools, office buildings. Those are good spots. Residential homes as they get older, 20 years, 30, 40 years old and older, those are great candidates and we also do gas lines and we can do hydronic lines for chilled water lines. Different types of pipes but they’re usually all under pressure.

CHARLIE: So, let’s get down to that whole idea of the way the process works. You said that you epoxy coat the inside of the pipe, what’s the process for making that happen.

GARY: The whole process starts with isolating segments. Let’s say, for instance, to simplify just the hot water lines in a home. So, we disconnect all of the supply lines and we blow air through those pipes and we kind of convection bake the corrosion and the rust and everything that’s on the inside. We get it really, really hot, we blow it dry and we get it to where we can sand blast the inside of the pipe. Pretty neat idea to come into these half inch tubes and pipes and to sand blast and clean the corrosion, the calcium. It can be certainly big chunks of rust and we sand blast it out of the inside of the pipe, getting down to bare material. Once we do that, it opens them up. It’s kind of like an angioplasty that you might have on your heart. We do it to the house and it’s vital, it’s vital for the plumbing system of the home. Get it nice and clean and then we blow in the epoxy resin from each and every connection that we have isolated and what that does is it wets the inside of that pipe and it’s a permanent solution. Epoxies are so much stronger than galvanized coatings. They’re so much stronger than bare copper pipe and that’s normally where you see us using the product in a steel pipe or a copper pipe.

CHARLIE: So, you’re gonna end up with pipes that are literally better than they were when they were new.

GARY: Without a doubt. The technology’s proven and we know for a fact that a resin coated, epoxy coated pipe will outlast anything.

CHARLIE: Gary, do you get questions and that, that resin epoxy thing, and you’re gonna run drinking water through, I mean, how safe is it?

GARY: It’s safe enough that we actually have patents that are in place for the anti-leaching of lead, copper, heavy metals, in to the drinking water. So, we’re sealing the pipe from the inside and putting an inert barrier between the wall of the pipe and the water itself. Super inert, super clean, like plastic, like a CPVC, PVC pipe but cleaner. I mean, it’s just super, super clean and to come into a place that has contaminated drinking water, maybe lead contamination, to be able to patent the process of sealing, prevent the corrosion and erosion from happening, that’s what it’s all about. It’s good stuff.

CHARLIE: Is ePIPE right for every situation then, Gary? I mean, are there situation where it doesn’t make sense?

GARY: There certainly are. What we look at is from a case to case basis. Sometimes re-pipes, conventionally, make sense. For instance, after Harvey hit, you have a lot of houses, walls were torn out, you’ve got great access and maybe faster ways to re-pipe and we might steer you in that direction. There are obviously other places it makes complete sense, it’s the right way to go but either way, our company can come in and we could look at that together, make some decisions of what would make sense and then you go from there. You make the right decision and we position that.

CHARLIE: You touched on the idea of having to open up the walls to re-pipe, how much opening up of walls do you have to do for the ePIPE system?

GARY: That’s what’s nice about it. Actually, that’s one of the things that’s nice about it. As far as the epoxy coating technologies, we access those lines where they come out of the wall already. We’re using that host pipe and applying that continuous barrier coating to the inside so we don’t typically have to get into the wall. So, if you have a nicely painted wall with drywall and wallpaper or whatever, we don’t have to cut into that wall to get to it, with the exception of just a few locations like at a tub fixture. Tubs are the only place in a home that typically the pipes don’t come out of the wall so we gotta touch it depending on the valve, the style. We may go from one side of the wall or the other. We’re gonna need to touch that. But compared to a re-pipe, let’s say a re-pipe, you have 10 holes or 30 holes or even more in a decent size home, we’re talking about many one or two or three locations. Huge difference. And the speed and the timing is fantastic.

CHARLIE: Yeah, I was gonna ask you. How long does this process take?

GARY: Most of the homes, if you’re looking at a residential setting, we often will start on Monday and depending on the size, we finish Wednesday, Thursday, maybe sometimes Friday. So, three to five days is very typical. Bigger properties, however, we have a few 125 unit kind of like hotel style, those we may work on them for up to a year. Isolating sections at a time, letting people live there and continue to do business as usual and we will restore that pipe over time in a very convenient manner.

CHARLIE: When you come to my house, am I gonna lose all use of my water while you’re doing this?

GARY: To your home, Charlie, yep, you will lose your water.

CHARLIE: Okay. No but I’m saying it’s only a few days but how does that impact my day to day life in the house while you’re doing it?

GARY: Again, typically, we’re gonna turn the water off. The primary plumbing system of the home will be without water. There certainly are ways for us to get water to commode fixtures. Everybody has bottom water. Most often, our clients never leave the residence. They’re not gonna go somewhere. Although, from time to time, we have folks that will say, “Hey, I’m on vacation from October the 25th to the 30th, can you do my house?” And we will. It’s perfect but you’re without hot and cold water, let’s say, your lavatories or whatever but we’ll give you some water so that you can use some fixtures.

CHARLIE: Okay, cool. Well, that sounds like it’s a lot less inconvenient than the longer re-piping process. Are there other alternative to this? I mean, is PEX an alternative to doing this, Gary?

GARY: Oh certainly. Everybody, do your research, work with folks like us, look at the piping system. A one story house has a better solution than a two story house when it comes to a re-pipe. You can re-pipe with copper. People do it with CPVC PEX, that’s another product that people re-pipe all the time with. New construction homes are being put in using typically PEX or CPVC. We, actually, we’re re-piping copper if you would like to go to another metallic pipe. So, there are options out there and we’re here to help with those.

CHARLIE: So you have the ePIPE and you have these other re-piping options as well.

GARY: Absolutely.

CHARLIE: All right. You can learn more about ePIPE and the other re=piping and plumbing restoration options that they have available from TDT Plumbing on the website. In case you needed it, it’s tdtplumbing.com. Gary, thanks for taking time to help us understand this process today.

GARY: Thank you, Charlie, have a good day.

The post Should I repipe my home? Or can I use ePIPE technology? appeared first on TDT Plumbing.

Recently two HUD Senior Living facilities in the Houston area were experiencing the effects of major corrosion in their piping systems.

Extremely low water pressure, rusty water and pinhole leaks were disturbing the needs and daily routines of the occupants of both buildings. Conventional repair methods would be extremely disruptive to both residents and staff, and may have caused them to be without water for extended periods of time, which could have required displacement of the residents.

TDT Plumbing, an ePIPE affiliate in Houston, was called on to provide the patented ePIPE solution as a less invasive and cost effective alternative to a repipe.

The Heights House is a Senior Living Facility built in 1978, consisting of 151 units. TDT Plumbing worked with the client to develop a timeline based upon the needs of the residents, utilizing shorter work days in order to provide minimal disruption to their daily routines. Watch this video featuring the residents of Heights House and their endorsement of the ePIPE process:

Woodland Christian Towers provides affordable housing to seniors and disabled adults, and consists of 126 accessible apartments. The property contains asbestos, so traditional methods here would require abatement, adding cost to the overall project. TDT was able to provide a viable solution that was City of Houston, ADA and NFPA code, and standard compliant.

The post HUD Properties Benefit From Using ePIPE appeared first on TDT Plumbing.