My husband is freaking out because he discovered our house has polybutylene pipes for all the water pipes in the house. Technically, we knew this when we bought the house, because it was in the inspection, but neither of us knew what it meant. He was talking to our contractor who pointed it out, and the contractor said somehting like, "You have poly pipes. That suuuuucks." So now my husband thinks we need to have them replaced before we have a massive leak on our hands. Does anyone have this type of pipe in your house? Did you replace it, and if you didn't, did you have a leak? In case you don't know what the pipes are, here's a link http://www.polybutylene.com/poly.html
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My sister had these. Because of her experience having to replace them all, we kept a sharp eye out for them while house shopping.
You might contact a local realtor or your insurance agency to check in about law suits and recalls. I think for a while repairs were being partly paid for? But I'm not sure if that is still happening.
My sister did end up having a leak. They caught it fairly early, but it still resulted in ALL their piping being replaced. It was a pretty huge mess (holes in a lot of the walls to get to the pipes).
But sort of positive, they'd been wanting to update some bathrooms so it became a good time to do that.
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We had them, and yes, we replaced them. It was discovered on our house inspection, and we added it to our closing agreement. The seller paid for the pipes throughout the house to be replaced. Our inspector said polybutylene pipes last 20-25 years, max, and our house was 22 years when we bought it. He basically said it was a ticking time bomb.
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This is really worrying me! I'm angry now at our realtor for not even mentioning it to us. I know it was on the inspection report, but we were first time homebuyers, and we didn't know what the different types of pipes meant. If I had known it was a major problem, I would have made the sellers pay for replacing them. Nobody brought it up! We just spent a lot of money renovating the house, and now we could have a leak because we have crappy pipes!
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@aprild: Our inspector did the same thing on a few things other than the pipes, and it's incredibly frustrating. I doubt you can get your realtor to do anything about it now, but I would at least call and make them aware of it and say, "Next time, you might want to warn a home buyer about this before they make the purchase!"
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@aprild: Were either of you there for the inspection?
That's one reason why DH has made sure to be there the day of inspection so he can ask the inspector what everything means and, sometimes, even what it might cost to change things.
Thought I'd mention it in case it could help someone in the future.
I didn't go to the inspection of my first house, and I have to say, the paperwork after the fact totally overwhelmed me. But between my realtor and DH (DBF at the time), they were able to highlight the things to really worry about.
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@littlebug: I think I will let my realtor know about the pipe issue. It's possible she wasn't aware of the different types of pipes, or maybe she thought it was an easy fix. Who knows? But I feel like she should be aware for future clients.
@MaryM: I wasn't there for the inspection. We had a vacation planned the week they did the inspection, and if we had rescheduled the inspection, it would have not given us enough time to get everything done before closing. My realtor assured me that she would be there the entire time and let me know of the major issues, but somehow the pipes didn't come up. They were listed in the report, but it was a huge report, and we figured it wasn't anything important since the realtor didn't mention it. But in the future, I definitely think we should be there during the inspection.
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My parents have them in their house, and they have had a ton of issues with them. I think they have replaced most of the plumbing in the house by now by replacing as much of the plumbing as they can every time they have had a leak. They couldn't afford to replace everything at once. They bought their house in the 80's before the issue with those type of pipes was discovered.
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