How I know what polybutylene means

Thank goodness my husband loves me so much, because I have been a drama queen this week. No, not in a girly way complaining about how he is ditching me for two weeks for Kenya (which he is, but since he has to do emergency comms training in the middle of Africa, I’m not going to bewail too much), but about PIPES. Yeh, polybutylene piping, which is all over our prospective new house and I have worked myself into a tizzy over it.

Apparently, polybutylene was the “pipe of the future… future…. future” when they installed it in the house, but in the last 20 years they have discovered that it has a delightful habit of spontaneously combusting. And the plumbing in the house runs through the attic, which given said spontaneous behavior could mean a big mess in a big hurry. So naturally I want it replaced before it spontaneously combusts over my brand new dining hutch, and so far its not looking favorable. I’m usually pretty level-headed, but this has honest to the plumbing gods gotten me so stressed out that I am just plain pathetic, and I need it to be over- fixed or not- so that I can stop having heart palpitations every 10 minutes. Bottom line is today (while at work no less) we have to decide whether or not to spend the cash to fix or walk away from the whole thing. New arch enemy in life: polybutylene. Good news is John & Kate are now off the hook.