I saw a house for sale today and my realtor and I couldn't figure out what this was attached to the water heater, some kind of water piping/tubing. We'll get to the bottom of it with the inspection, just impatient to know what on earth this is. House built in 1984.
Plumbing – Identifying Basement Tubing and Its Purpose
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I had this exact scenario in my home and the culprit turned out to be a failing pressure regulator valve. It's typically installed after the shutoff valve where the line enters the home and will probably have a bolt going into the side of the device that would be used to adjust the pressure.
To see if this is the case, go over to the home improvement store and pickup a water pressure gauge that screws onto a garden faucet. Attach the device to any fixture, open the valve and leave it, then go inside and turn on the cold water for 5 seconds, back off, and go back to the gauge to see if it starts climbing as the pipes bang.
You may also notice toilets or other valves leaking in the house if you have an overpressure situation. I ended up replacing several leaking toilet valves and a sink valve because of pressure issues.
Replacing this can be a DIY job if you're comfortable cutting and soldering pipes.
Edit: here's a sample picture
I am a professional plumber and I have been using PEX tubing for 20 years and I am also manufacturer-certified to do so.
The only time I've ever seen this green color in PEX tubing it was algae. The pipe was a cold water supply line that was wrapped with heat tape and pipe insulation, and run above ground underneath my camper. When I removed the pipe it had algae growth along its whole length.
However, the algae will not stick to the pipe. When you kill it, it will just wash away out through your faucets; just make sure you remove your aerators in order not to clog them.
- Shut off the water supply line to your water heater.
- Drain some water out of your water heater from the drain valve.
- Disconnect the supply line from your water heater, so you can pour your bleach in from there.
- Reconnect your water heater and run hot water out all your faucets until you can smell the bleach.
- After letting it sit for a sufficient amount of time, flush all the water out of your hot water pipes and water heater until no more bleach is detected.
This will kill your algae, but you may still have it inside your pipes. You might need to tap on the pipe to knock it loose before flushing.
In my case I drained the pipe and the algae dried up and fell from the pipe. Or you could remove and replace the affected area.
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Best Answer
It looks like PEX and has the white ring things that go over Uponor ProPEX style connectors. Here is a video of the material in use, pay attention to the expansion tool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXYONkaxzv8
You should confirm this observation by noting any markings printed on the tubing, they should say PEX somewhere. The house was built right in the middle of the polybutylene era, you want to be absolutely sure it is not that.
PEX would definitely not be original to the house as it did not exist in 1984. Why the piping was replaced would be a good question for the seller, it might actually be replacing polybueylene. https://www.nachi.org/pb.htm