PEX, Absorbs Oils?

A friend had a major and costy sequense of events occur recently. It's a long story but the short of it is old contaminated cooling oil got into his well. The advice was to pump it out and distribute around. Then he found out there were PCBs involved. Updated potable water plumbing was done used PEX, "AquaPEX PEX5006 3/4IN SDR9 B137 .5 POTABLE" to be precise. Can the PEX absorb the oil, can it be cleaned free of it or is it time to replace all the water lines?

Plastics are porus. This is why PEX needs an oxygen barrier for heating applications. For an experiment, take a milk jug, wash it out, re-cap it and set it in the sunlight for a few days. Open the cap and I bet is smells like sour milk.

Anything that would clean the oil out may be just as problematic as the orginal contaimination. Best bet is to replace the lines. Lines to toilets could be left in place as long as he doen't plan on drinking out of the toilet.

VigIIPeaBurner wrote: It's a long story but the short of it is old contaminated cooling oil got into his well.

Oil from an electrical transformer ???

Careful what you say on the net ..... you 'll have EPA goons swarming your house & his these days.

AA130FIREMAN wrote:

VigIIPeaBurner wrote: It's a long story but the short of it is old contaminated cooling oil got into his well.

Oil from an electrical transformer ???

Depends on what type of electrical transformer you are talking about. Most transformers you see on the street (ground/pole) are usually filled with mineral oil so the EPA doesn't need to be involved in that.

I was doing an inspection at a daycare once and some idiot woman drove her car into the ground transformer in front of the school. Took the power out for 6 blocks. She then tried to leave the scene. The fire marshal put the school on fire watch and since I was there I was nominated by default to remain on site until the power was restored. When PSE&G arrived I had asked about the EPA since I was making all the calls to get the crews on site. I was told no, since it is just mineral oil there was no hazardous material cleanup and inspection. They just took the blown transformer out, put the new one in and left. But that was several years ago so maybe the rules/laws have changed.

With PCB's in the well, it definitely wasn't a new transformer.

Back 18 years ago I watched 20 guys with full hazmat gear remove a 12 ton transformer from the former Whitin Machine Works in Whitinsville. I was standing there in a T-shirt and jeans while these guys were dressed for a space mission .... and the thing wasn't even leaking!

That's when this old timer told me of how they used to don swim trunks and jump into that PCB laden liquid to perform repairs. Boy have times changed ....

I seem to remember in the pa. fishing handbook to be cautious of eating snapping turtles, they can contain PCB's, does it remain in them for many years ? Are their still some old transformers by the old cannals ? Or do the snappers climp poles to eat holes in transformers to suck out the delicious oil

AA130FIREMAN wrote:I seem to remember in the pa. fishing handbook to be cautious of eating snapping turtles, they can contain PCB's, does it remain in them for many years ? Are their still some old transformers by the old cannals ? Or do the snappers climp poles to eat holes in transformers to suck out the delicious oil

The stuff is fat soluble. It gets into the mud, is taken up by the pant and animal life and end up in the food chain. It's there and gets spread around for a while ...