Q: Will ungluing broken pipe comprise the integrity of the existing pipe?

A: When the broken pipe is cut off at the fitting and then heated from the inside with a Pipe Debonder, the heat conducts through the pipe wall until the glue interface is softened. A precise computer program controls both time and temperature for the thickness and size of pipe. When the glue is soft, the fitting is still cool to touch. The warm pipe is soft enough to bend around itself and be removed with the patented extraction tool, but the barely warm fitting socket is undamaged and ready to re-glue immediately.

The integrity of the pipe being unglued is certainly compromised; but that pipe is already broken and being replaced.

Many plumbers are used to using a Rambit or holesaw for the same purpose, which certainly compromises the pipe too as it cuts it into small pieces. It is the integrity of the fitting that matters here and a hacksaw blade, chisel, or holesaw all risk scoring the socket wall, increasing the chance for a leak.

Properly ungluing leaves the fitting uncompromised and with no scar.

Q. Will plumbing inspectors have an issue with fittings that have been debonded and reglued?

Generally not. If a plumber were installing a new piping system in a building, and he quoted using all new parts and then was found to be using used fittings, that plumber would be in violation of his quote, but not necessarily the code. Regluing a fitting that came apart is frequently done in every plastic pipe application around the world and is accepted by most plumbing inspectors. In fact, ungluing pipe is often the preferred repair method because the it requires fewer fittings and fewer glue joints and the repair looks identical to the original installation.

Many of our customers are municipalities, the organizations that employ inspectors!

Q. PVC and plastic pipe is cheap. How is the price of the Debonder justified?

A. The price of the small Debonder is $900 and is for ungluing 1/2″ to 4″ pipe. (Up to 3” for schedule 80). It unglues PVC, CPVC, & ABS pipe. Almost every repair is made in less than 30 minutes and without any new fittings. If you save a few trips to town or a few $100 valves, it pays back fast. Plus, you get your customer back on line much quicker, which many customers will pay extra for. Most of our customers tell us they paid back the price of their Debonder within the first few uses.

The savings in fittings is the least important cost advantage of ungluing broken pipe.

The big savings from ungluing plastic pipe is the reduction in downtime for your customers. The savings to you comes from all the trips back to town to get fittings that are not on your truck. Whether or not you charge for your time, you spend it. Ungluing allows almost every leak repair to be completed without any fittings and in less than 30 minutes by ungluing both ends of the broken pipe and putting in a new piece. If the pipe is long, at most you need only one coupling and no trips to town.

Think about this scenario: One broken pipe coming out of a wall or out of concrete where you have to dig it out generally costs a whole day and $1000. Debond the fitting in 10 minutes and charge for the value you create, not the short amount of time you spent. Your customer is back up within an hour, not a whole day. So you save down time which results in lower labor costs for you or your crew. Repairs are made such that you can’t tell there was a break and you can get rid of previous repair couplings cluttering up the system.

Technology has value. Your customers won’t ever call your competition once they know how quickly you do repairs and make design changes.

Q. Can’t I just use a heat torch and get the same result as the Debonder, for less money?

A. Any heat source supplying the right amount of heat uniformly to a pipe will allow it to soften and be removed. If you really want to avoid buying a Pipe Debonder, but still unglue successfully, you can use a piece of steel pipe or heavy wall tubing just slightly smaller than the ID of the plastic pipe you want removed. Heat it to orange with a propane torch and hold it inside the pipe until the pipe is soft enough to unglue. If you repair plastic pipe often enough, it is far faster and more professional to use the Pipe Debonder. It works every time without scaring the socket with a screwdriver or needle nose pliers.

Can you really unglue 3″ or larger schedule 80 pipe with a heat gun? Pipe Debonder can, every time, no problem.

Q: I haven’t come across the need for a Debonder. Why do I need one?

A. The primary use of the Debonder is for breaks and big design changes. One customer installed 21 two-inch schedule 80 tees in an 80-foot-long run. Then he glued in 21 half-inch reducer bushings into the tees. The next morning the architect changed the design to 3/4 inch. The only choice was to rebuild the entire manifold, taking most of a day. No combination of suppliers had 21 two-inch tees in his town. The cost to rebuild this manifold was $5500 including flying fittings.

The other option was to unglue the bushings. Using a hole saw to remove the spokes on the reducers and a 7 minute Debonding cycle, the half inch bushings were removed in 3.5 hours. The whole job was completed in less than 5 hours and the cost was reduced to $600. These situations don’t happen every day, but justifying the Debonder was simple in this situation.

Q. How else can I use the Debonder?

A. You likely have a boneyard of glued fittings, flanges, and valves you could put back in service. The value of those salvageable parts is probably worth much more than the cost of the Debonder. Unglue those and reuse them or sell them. You can even charge other plumbers to unglue their boneyards of materials! Plumbing schools debond pipe everyday to save the cost of the fittings and the cost of disposal. In that sense, Pipe Debonders are environment friendly and green.

Q. Can older pipe be unglued, even on pipe glued years ago?

A. Absolutely! We’ve had customers unglue pipe that was originally installed more than 25 years ago.

Q. Will the Debonder stand up to being bounced around in my service truck, and can it be used in tight areas without the risk of igniting insulation or wood?

A. Yes. All Pipe Debonders are built very robust. They all come in hard shell cases that you can stand on and the cases are foam lined to protect the tools. They will stand up to being bounced around in a truck.

The small Debonder is 6 inches long and 4 inches in diameter. That is how much space is needed to fit it into the broken pipe so it works in tight spaces. It’s especially useful for closet (toilet) flange repairs where the pipe is cut off from the inside and the Pipe Debonder inserted through the floor to unglue the WYE or SWEEP. The heat element is guarded and only heats the plastic enough to peel way from the fitting. As long as there are no flammable gasses in the area or in the pipe system, there is no fire danger.

What plumbing contractor would work without a cell phone in today’s marketplace? There are many technology enhancements contractors use daily such as computerized invoicing, email quotes, and text messaging to customers regarding status of installations and repairs.

There is new technology that can have a big effect on productivity and that is the ability to unglue plastic pipe joints in order to make repairs quickly and not having to go back to the store for fittings.

Consider a break above ground between a tee and a valve where there is ample space to put in 3 couplings and replace the tee. Now imagine being able to cut the pipe at the tee and at the valve and then unglue both of those joints. Installing a new piece of pipe into the original valve and original tee can be done in less than 20 minutes, depending on the size pipe. It requires no fittings andno trips to town for parts if you don’t have enough couplings, valves, or tees on your truck. Your customer is back up and running in a half hour and generally is willing to pay premium for the reduced down time. You get the job done without parts, in less time, and charge the same, and sometimes more, than if you replaced the fitting.

Technology gives you a distinct advantage over your competition that cannot unglue pipe. Your customers know you can get them back up much faster than other plumbing contractors and they start thinking of never calling anyone else but you for their repairs. Adding a high technology tool, your Pipe Debonder, to your capability pays for itself every year many times over, but the biggest advantage to you is the increased revenue and profits your business earns because of the new capability you added using new technology.

Most users save enough money on the first 2 jobs to pay for the Pipe Debonder. They cost $899 with free shipping for ½” to 3” pipe sizes. Patented technology, made in America.

“Assembling a large manifold in a new building consisting of a 2-inch main with 11 schedule 80 PVC TEEs, each with a 2 x ½ inch reducer bushing, I received a new set of architectural drawings changing all of the bushings to ¾”.

I had just glued the half inch bushings into place that morning. Rebuilding that manifold would have required 11 new TEEs and half a day. My customer invoice would have been $480 in materials plus $360 in labor plus $180 time to chase parts for a total of $1020.

Also I couldn’t find 11 2” TEES in my city so I wouldn’t have been able to complete the work until the next day.

What I actually did was use a sawzall to cut the spokes out of each bushing leaving a thick wall glued in the TEEs. The remaining wall thickness of the cut bushing was a little thicker than 2 inch schedule 80 pipe, so I used the next larger size, 2.5” schedule 80 and selected that cycle on my Pipe Debonder. The resulting cycle time was 8.5 minutes. I used my small Pipe Debonder to unglue all 11 bushings in about 90 minutes. I was able to reuse every TEE.

After I picked up the new bushings, I re-glued the 11 TEEs in 30 minutes, completing the job in about 2 hours.

Total cost: $180 labor plus $148 for bushings plus $180 for a total of $508, a savings of $512. Plus I could complete the change order the same day.

This one job paid half of the cost of my Pipe Debonder.”

Plumbers need to know the latest in technology so they can enter the field prepared to save their customers, and their businesses or employers, time and money.

When a vocational school in Massachusetts received its new Debonder, the plumbing teacher and the students weren’t exactly sure what to expect. It became clear pretty quickly that the tool would be a hit. The instructor told us,

This is the best plumbing tool I’ve ever been able to teach students to use.  It saves the school a ton of money because we can reuse fittings. The students love using it in class and are excited to get out in the field and use this tool. It gives them a great opportunity to learn new innovative technology. It’s really cool. Once the machine warms up, which only takes a couple of minutes, we can keep that thing hot and working for us all day. We’re really happy with this Debonder.

Have you tried a Debonder yet?

Sometimes we get questions from potential customers, or just people interested in the plumbing industry, what the benefits are of the Pipe Debonder.

The bottom line is that we believe that we provide the plastic pipe industry with unique tools to save significant money for any repair to glued pipe systems.

The primary and most significant benefit is the reduction in down time.  For the worst repair requiring at most, couplings, and at least, no fittings at all, the normal down time from arriving on the job to system back on line is usually cut by 65 percent for 3” to 6” pipe, cut by 80 percent for large pipe, and cut by 50 percent for small pipe.  Most of our customers charge less to unglue pipe than they do for normal replacement of fittings repairs, but some actually charge more because the customer always gets back on line within two hours. We all know there’s a value in speedy repairs!

We have never heard of a customer going to another plumber for being overcharged because he can unglue joints.

The second benefit is the labor savings.  Shorter down time also equates to less labor required.

The third benefit is the savings in fittings and valves that are not replaced.  Naturally, the larger the pipe, the more is saved.

A fourth benefit is a cleaner job. Rather than clog up a piping system with couplings every time a break occurs, debonding both ends of a pipe run allows a repair to be made where the repair is not evident and the pipe system is as clean as the original installation.

One customer recently wrote to tell us that the Debonder is the greatest plumbing tool ever created. While we certainly realize there are a lot of great tools on the market, we’re honored to provide tools that help customers save time, money, and frustration.

More than one PIPE DEBONDER customer has gone into business, not to install piping systems or repair broken pipe, but rather to unglue these “bone yard” piles of re-usable PVC, ABC, and CPVC fittings and put them back into inventory.  Understanding that this is a completely new market, salvaging valves and fittings on a labor only basis can be profitable for both the contractor and the debonder.  The small debonder (to 3 inch size) sells for $900 and rents for $80 for 2 days.  In 2 days’ time most bone yards can be salvaged, but rather than the contractor renting the debonder, the new business owner can salvage $1000 or more of valves and fittings in a day.  If he does it for $65 per hour and makes $450 per day and saves the contractor $1000 in parts, it is a win-win for both.

Pipe fittings to 6 inch are more valuable and take longer to unglue, but the recovery value is even a higher ratio than for small pipe sizes.  For example, a 6 inch schedule 80 CPVC flange list cost is $245.  A 4 inch schedule 80 PVC union list cost is $138.

Recovering the value of really large fittings is even more evident.  A 12 inch schedule 80 PVC tee list cost is $2440.  The LARGE DEBONDER sells for $6400 and rents for $500 for 2 days.  At $120 per hour to debond large pipe fittings and valves, many thousand dollars of otherwise unusable fittings can be reclaimed for a few hundred dollars of labor.

Specialty businesses set up to unglue pipe have a large initial opportunity to make money and save the contractor money.  The same is true for municipalities for water delivery and waste water collection and treatment facilities.  It also is true for irrigators such as golf courses and parks.  And every water park has lots of glued fittings that are of no value without being debonded.

One clever businessman has gone beyond ungluing bone yards for his customers to where he buys them at 18% on the dollar, unglues them, and offers them on a web site for available used fittings for 45 percent to 70 percent on the dollar.

I discovered a leaking 1-inch PVC sprinkler valve in my outdoor box.

The box was built with an 8 way cross manifold where my system has the primary inlet and 5 zones of the possible 7 being used. The valves are glued to a short piece of pipe and then glued to the manifold.

The conventional method of repairing this leak is to replace the manifold. The installer built the manifold with short pieces of pipe to every alternate leg so that the valves wouldn’t bump into each other. The inlet to the manifold has a glued 1-inch ball valve installed. Two of the zone valves have lengths of pipe long enough that I can cut them off such that I can install couplings on the pipe and reuse the valves. The other three valves must be scrapped and replaced.

The job entails replacing the manifold, the ball valve, three of the zone valves, two caps, and three couplings. In all, it requires 18 glue joints to rebuild my system. My sprinkler installer says that the job will take him about 2.5 hours including wiring and testing, provided that he has all of the fittings and parts on his truck. If not, he must go back to his shop or supply house, costing another hour. Total down time is half day after arrival. Total cost to the installer in fittings and parts is $39; $85 is my cost. Labor, including drive time is four hours at $95 per hour, which is $465 plus tax for a total of $495.

The latest technology for glued pipe system repairs is ungluing and reusing fittings, replacing only the pipe that is broken. This requires a Pipe Debonder tool that is commercially available. Ungluing the one joint from the manifold to the leaking sprinkler valve requires these steps:

Disconnect the wiring to the leaking valve.

Remove the soil two inches below the manifold at the leaking valve.

Cut the pipe to the leaking valve ¼ inch from the manifold and remove the valve.

Insert the Pipe Debonder into the manifold and run the 1-inch schedule 40 cycle (which takes two and a half minutes).

Remove the piece of glued pipe from the manifold.

Glue in a new piece of 1-inch pipe to the manifold.

Glue in a new zone valve to the pipe.

Connect the zone pipe to the valve.

Connect the wiring to the valve.

Total time for repair is 20 minutes. Fitting cost to installer is $12; $23 for me. Labor cost is one hour plus one hour of driving time for two hours at $95. Add parts and tax for a total of $227.

My savings is almost $200 and repair time is less than a half hour versus 2.5 hours for a conventional repair.

I want my sprinkler installer / repair contractor to have ungluing technology. Do you?

Q: I have a stack of PVC pipe sitting outside in the weather and it has been there for several hot summers. The heat causes the ends of the pipe, in particular, to become squared slightly and difficult to fit into a fitting socket because it is no longer perfectly round. What can I do to re-round the pipe?

A: Use a PIPE DEBONDER tool, which is normally used for ungluing broken plastic pipe from glued fittings.

The heat from a debonding cycle can be used to soften the pipe sufficiently to allow it to be removed from a fitting. It can also be used to re-round pipe ends to their original perfectly round shape.

Using the next smaller size thermal cycle (for example if you have 3 inch pipe that is be re-rounded, use the 2.5 inch cycle for the same schedule (wall thickness) as programmed into the PIPE DEBONDER. The heating of the inside of the pipe will relax the pipe and allow the stacking stresses to be relaxed to where the pipe can obtain, on its own, its original round shape. When it cools, it can be inserted into the fitting it is to be cement bonded to.

Another trick is to slip on a coupling of the same size to the end of the pipe to force it round. After a few minutes to cool, the pipe will stay round for a long time.

We purchased the Debonder to perform a large Boiler re-plumb for the Water Park. We had 22, 2½ inch CPVC tru-union check valves in the system. The cost to replace these valves would have been over $6600.00. By purchasing the Debonder and reusing the valves, we paid for the Debonder, many times over.

Out of 22 valves we reused 22.

Since this purchase, we have used the Debonder all over both parks, and at our Waste Water Treatment plant.

Everyone wants to borrow it, all the time.

We purchased the small rechargeable system, and then, after trying the product, purchased the larger battery system as well.

We are able to do small one time, on site repairs as well as large multi connection repairs with ease.

It is a great product and I would highly recommend it to anyone wanting to save time and money on PVC and CPVC repairs.

Jeff’s story underlies the powerful potential cost benefits of The Pipe Debonder.