[PunchyHamster]

> I think people are often surprised how little materials cost affects the total cost of a job.

It's because they frankly never did it. Nobody that had to contract something around the house is surprised by cost like that, it often costs more than price of renting equipment + you doing it yourself 3 times slower than an expert would did it, even if you're paid well.

There is reason there is so many DIY channels, labour costs are high and install costs of some stuff can be ridiculous (like 2 hour job to install AC costing more than cheap AC unit).

That's also partly the reason the more expensive materials are used - if they offer savings in labour (say way faster to put in), they might be worth it vs paying someone for more hours

[SoftTalker]

It's why plumbers use $25 sharkbite fittings now instead of soldering in a $2 copper fitting. But of course the sharkbite relies on a rubber O-ring and will probably leak in 10 years, the plumber will be long gone or the property probably under new ownership who don't remember.

[giardini]

Softalker is right-on in his warning:

We usually have a few freezes in the winter and some homes' pipes freeze. I was surprised, in speaking to a plumber, to find that pipe clamp installation had come to dominate the repair market (as opposed to repairing/replacing the leaky pipe).

In his first year this plumber had arrived at the plumbing supply house to find all pipe clamp orders backlogged two weeks! He thus determined to, during the warmer months, stockpile a cache of pipe clamps for the coming winter.

Furthermore, as SofTalker states, the fitting is usually left in-place instead of being replaced! Yet one more reason to have a prospective home inspected by someone who is very knowledgeable.

[Animats]

Automated radial welding for pipes seems to be slowly reaching small, plumbing-sized pipes.[1] This has been around for years for larger pipes, but the equipment is now down to home plumbing diameters. Still too expensive, though, at around US$10,000.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Jr1TZW8dKCw

[quickthrowman]

Propress compression fittings which use a hydraulic press are effective enough for domestic water pipes, along with traditional solder joints.

Electrical compression fittings are excellent too, but some engineers still specify exothermic welds (cadwelding) for grounding conductors in particular.

I did a project a couple years back with a mechanical contractor that used a similar machine to the one in the video you shared, except theirs was a bit larger ;) They were welding 18” HPDE pipes together for a geothermal district energy project, we were laying some puny 2” schedule 80 conduit that was glued together with primer and cement for future fiber cables that will connect to the meters of the customers of the district energy system.

[giardini]

ProPress are a (high-quality) solution but IIRC for copper piping.

PEX water piping expands and fails less(than galvanized) in freezing temperatures. This is the current accepted replacement for galvanized water piping.

PVC piping is also used but doesn't develop the pinhole leaks that galvanized steel pipe does. However it can fatigue and develop leaks.

AFAIK all can be patched with, ta-da, pipe clamps!

But most water leaks, especially in winter freezing, arise in old rusting galvanized steel piping. I'm not a plumber but I was a condominium association officer and president and so got to choose, watch and pay for repairs.

We had only copper, PVC and galvanized water lines. The copper was well underground and so failed only once in 20 years due to age and a nearby tree shifting the pipes. The PVC never failed but we had almost none. The galvanized pipe was a guaranteed failure every winter unless we took serious precautions when temperatures dropped.

[giardini]

That's very nice but I doubt it will replace pipe clamps in ease of installation and cost in a real-world repair environment. Many leaks in say steel galvanized water pipes are the result of corrosion. Pinhole leaks form, then more and then enough water leaks to be noticed on either exterior or interior wall. Jose the Plumber will leave his radial welder in the shop (b/c power is out anyway in the affected area and he doesn't carry a generator on his truck) and reach for his box of pipe clamps. Problem solved and on to the next job.

[ErroneousBosh]

Yeah. I mean I just had some concrete slabs laid to put a bike shed on (literally bikeshedding, the colour is green, that's what it comes powdercoated in from the supplier, take it or leave it).

It was 300 quid.

I could not buy the materials for 300 quid.

Two guys showed up with eight slabs, half a tonne of Type 2 and half a tonne of sand, and then the next day the landscaper showed up and did about six hours of work to dig it all out, fill it all in, and put the slabs down.

It's absolutely perfect, exactly how I wanted it, and it would have taken me a couple of days and cost far more - and I'm quite good at that kind of stuff, it's just not what I do all day every day so the landscaper will be far better at it.

[jimnotgym]

My experience when i was in the trade is very few people know what perfect looks like, and so are perfectly willing to forego decent workmanship in favour of cheap. One of the reasons I left the trade, you could make more money doing a bad job, and I had no desire to do that.