Moving on to the plumbing pressure lines. Other than the pex tubing that we embedded into the shop slab during the concrete flat work, this is pretty much my first experience with pex tubing. The stuff is the catsass, and installation is a breeze....kinda. I say kinda cuz I'm takin' the simplicity of pex tubing installation and adding a bit of an install headache by carefully setting the elevation of each run so that it pitches back (downhill) from the fixture that it serves. The idea is to ease winterization to the point that little/no pink stuff is required and most all the fixtures can be as simple as turning off the water, opening the fixture valve, and draining it back to the mechanical room. Of course, there will be some additional prep'ing for some fixtures (toilets require a bit more attention), but I hope to be able to pressurize selected fixtures when we arrive there on a cold, snowy weekend....and then drain them off and empty the lines when we leave. A system of valves will be incorporated in with the water mainifolds, and each fixture will have a home run (dedicated line) coming back to those manifolds. - - The pex is all roughed in.
Having sweated my share of copper and goofed around with far too many compression and flare fittings, the difficult process of cutting a plastic tube to length and crimping a copper ring is, well, a piece of cake.
