Owning a home comes with plenty of benefits, but there’s always things that go wrong and systems that need repair. Plumbing repairs can be one of the messiest, most expensive and time consuming systems to fix when things go wrong.

Traditionally, plumbing fixes involve cutting pipe, adding fittings, installing new joints and, in some circumstances, removing walls and flooring.

There’s a better way.

One homeowner recently said,

“I just learned about being able to unglue plastic pipe joints with a heating technique called Pipe Debonder. It seems so simple and fast to do repairs by ungluing fittings rather than replacing them with new ones when there is a broken pipe or leak.

I could unglue the pipe myself if I had the tool, but for a normal homeowner like me, the cost of the tool is too high for the rare breaks I experience. My contract plumber certainly would use it every week making his investment paid back quickly.

When I need plastic pipe repairs, I ask my plumber if he can unglue pipe when I ask for a quote. A plumber who can unglue fittings, valves, and toilet flanges can have my system up and working faster, saving me down time and saving me money while allowing my plumber to make more money in less time.

In tight spaces, repairing a broken pipe using the existing fittings and valves doesn’t require adding couplings to every leg of the replaced fittings so the repair is much less messy. Valves don’t have to be moved. Floors don’t have to be torn up. The whole job is faster and more tidy. When the repair is completed, you can’t tell that there was ever a break.”

Can your plumber unglue pipe?

From the discharge of a pump to a tee which splits the flow in two directions where the break occurs between the tee and the shut off valve on that leg of the piping system, if the broken pipe can be separated by 6 inches using unions or other features, the debonder may be used to unglue both  the tee and the valve where a short piece of pipe is re-glued and the repair is not evident where it cannot be determined there ever was a break there.  This is important when clean piping systems are desired and the use of couplings at every connection to a manifold occupy a lot of space and look messy.  They also create more opportunities for additional leaks.

If the piping system consisted of only one tee and two glued valves, the replacement of a broken pipe requires one tee, two valves, and 3 couplings  –  14 glue joints total.  Ungluing the broken piece allows the reuse of the tee and both valves and requires no couplings and only re-gluing two joints.  And the piping stays tidy and neat.