Simply about the complex: polypropylene pipes, their dimensions and operating conditions

The clas­sic steel pipeline is grad­u­al­ly fad­ing into his­to­ry, giv­ing way to more mod­ern, durable, as well as inex­pen­sive coun­ter­parts. Like every build­ing mate­r­i­al, they have their own advan­tages or dis­ad­van­tages. When choos­ing polypropy­lene pipes, the dimen­sions must be care­ful­ly checked and the mark­ing fea­tures must be known. We’ll talk about this.

Everything you need to know about polypropylene pipes

Kinds

Dimen­sions

Char­ac­ter­is­tics and use cas­es

Mount­ing Fea­tures

Fit­ting

Kinds

First of all, it is impor­tant to know the diam­e­ter of polypropy­lene com­po­nents for water sup­ply and heat­ing. There are sev­er­al vari­eties, they are divid­ed accord­ing to wall thick­ness, hydraulic cal­cu­la­tion and tem­per­a­ture con­di­tions that they are able to with­stand.

• PN 10 — they have the thinnest walls, which means it is best not to exper­i­ment with hot water and use it for cold water sup­ply. Some­times they are also used when installing a warm floor. Prod­ucts marked PN 10 can eas­i­ly with­stand water tem­per­a­tures up to 45 degrees and a max­i­mum pres­sure of 1 MPa.
• PN 16 — more resis­tant, work­ing pres­sure up to 1.6 MPa, and rec­om­mend­ed water tem­per­a­ture up to +60°C.
• PN 20 — as the wall thick­ness increas­es, so do the endurance indi­ca­tors. Here you can set up to 80 degrees of heat in the water and expe­ri­ence a pres­sure of 2 MPa.
• PN 25 is the most durable option. With­stand almost 95-degree boil­ing water, and also work qui­et­ly with a pres­sure of 2.5 MPa.

In addi­tion to these indi­ca­tors, it is cus­tom­ary to divide struc­tures into sin­gle-lay­er and mul­ti-lay­er ones. The sec­ond option is equipped with fiber­glass, foil and basalt fiber. Why is this need­ed? The rein­forc­ing lay­er, which, in fact, are all these addi­tives, allows the walls to become stronger, which means that they can with­stand high­er pres­sures and tem­per­a­ture changes. Reduces the risk of size expan­sion from hot water, which often occurs when work­ing with polypropy­lene.

How not to make mistakes when choosing sizes

What you need to know when going to the hard­ware store for goods? First, the terms of use. Will it be the instal­la­tion of a drink­ing water pipeline? Or are you plan­ning heat­ing or under­floor heat­ing? Believe me, in all these cas­es, the diam­e­ter, dimen­sions of fit­tings for polypropy­lene pipes in mm will be dif­fer­ent. That is why com­po­nents are bought for a spe­cif­ic con­struc­tion task. In addi­tion to the main func­tion, it must be tak­en into account whether there is heat­ing in the room where the instal­la­tion will be car­ried out.

Characteristics and use cases

To quick­ly under­stand what exact­ly you need, it is best to refer to the table for polypropy­lene pipes. There you need to find the tem­per­a­ture of inter­est, the size — the mark­ing that cor­re­sponds to the desired indi­ca­tors will be your guide.

The dimen­sions of polypropy­lene pipes are indi­cat­ed in inch­es and mm — this is done for con­ve­nience, since man­u­fac­tur­ers from dif­fer­ent coun­tries have their own ref­er­ence sys­tem.

Product options depending on the specifics of use

• РРН — homopoly­mers, they should be used only for cold water.
• PPB — block copoly­mers, are also good for cold water, some­times they are also used when installing a warm floor.
• PPR — polypropy­lene copoly­mer, the most pop­u­lar type, can be in con­tact with hot, cold water, under­floor heat­ing or heat­ing.
• PPs is an improved ver­sion with high­er heat resis­tance. Rarely found in res­i­den­tial build­ings.

Table of sizes of polypropylene pipes for heating and water supply

For lay­ing a water sup­ply sys­tem with cold water, includ­ing drink­ing water, the thinnest prod­ucts marked PN10 are suf­fi­cient. The house­hold pipeline does not have high pres­sure zones, as a rule, it is not more than 1 MPa, and the low water tem­per­a­ture does not cause lin­ear expan­sion.

Polypropy­lene pipes for heat­ing, the dimen­sions of which are in the table above, it is advis­able to use rein­forced, with foil or basalt. The lat­ter appeared quite recent­ly on the mar­ket and few peo­ple have worked with it yet, but the mate­r­i­al already has pos­i­tive feed­back from the pros. Why is rein­force­ment need­ed? This is a very impor­tant detail in the for­ma­tion of hot water sup­ply, because thanks to the gas­ket, when exposed to high tem­per­a­ture, propy­lene does not change its shape and size. This means there will be no defor­ma­tion that can cause leak­age. The inner diam­e­ter of polypropy­lene pipes, the table with which is pre­sent­ed above, becomes small­er, but out­ward­ly the part remains the same size.

Rules and useful tips for installation

• The eas­i­est designs to install are sin­gle-lay­er. To install them, first the prod­uct is cut with a pipe cut­ter, the edges are turned and the struc­ture is con­nect­ed using fit­tings or glue.
• Mul­ti­lay­er ones are mount­ed in the same way, the only dif­fer­ence is that cold weld­ing can­not be used when work­ing with them, it will not ensure the con­nec­tion of all lay­ers. Typ­i­cal­ly, mul­ti­lay­er parts are joined by hot weld­ing or spe­cial fit­tings are used.
• Rein­forced pipes need spe­cial prepa­ra­tion before instal­la­tion. The thing is that alu­minum foil is attached to the fiber with glue, which means there is a cer­tain risk of peel­ing. To avoid this, before weld­ing a prod­uct with alu­minum foil rein­force­ment, it is nec­es­sary, as it were, to sol­der the ends — remove part of the foil from the edge, and then sol­der the fiber on both sides. Water will not pen­e­trate through such pro­tec­tion, which means that the pipeline will remain intact.

What to look for when choosing fittings

As a rule, fit­tings for propy­lene parts are made of ther­mo­plas­tic. This mate­r­i­al is quite sen­si­tive to tem­per­a­ture changes and can deform when exposed to heat. That is why it is nec­es­sary to choose com­po­nents with spe­cial care. How not to make a mis­take?

• Com­pres­sion fit­tings are not suit­able for hot water sup­ply. They deform under com­pres­sion and can cause pipeline break­age. It is bet­ter to use an Amer­i­can — the thread­ed mech­a­nism is eas­i­ly dis­as­sem­bled, which means that in this case it will be more con­ve­nient.
• Be sure to check the mark­ing and GOST when buy­ing a prod­uct — it must exact­ly fit the rest of the struc­ture. For exam­ple, if you are work­ing with sol­der­ing, then it is impor­tant to choose both prod­ucts from the same mate­ri­als.
• Don’t buy mod­i­fied, wrin­kled, or even cracked fit­tings. Lit­tle things that you do not take into account can cause the entire plumb­ing to break.