BUILDING & CONSTRUCTION

Building & Construction Division Mission
To promote the expanded acceptance and use of high reliability plastic pressure pipe and tubing systems in building and construction environments by providing research, education, and code/standard development with a focus on delivering sustainable and safe plastic system solutions that enrich people's lives.

Building & Construction Product Overview
BCD is focused on plastic pressure pipe and tubing systems used within buildings and on building premises for applications such as plumbing, water service, fire protection, hydronic heating and cooling, snow and ice melting and ground source geothermal piping systems. Additional applications used in commercial construction include pre-insulated pipes for district heating and tubing systems for field heating or turf conditioning.

Building & Construction Materials
The types of pipe and tubing systems primarily represented by BCD are:
  • CPVC: Chlorinated polyvinyl chloride
  • HDPE: high density polyethylene
  • PEX: crosslinked polyethylene
  • PE-RT: polyethylene of raised temperature
  • PP-R and PP-RCT: random copolymerized polypropylene
  • PEX-AL-PEX: multilayer or composite tubing
Within PPI's Building & Construction Division, HDPE piping systems are used as the ground loops for ground source geothermal applications, also known as earth energy or geoexchange systems.

Features & Benefits of PEX, CPVC, PE-RT & PP-R/PP-RCT
In general, the features and benefits of these high-performance high-temperature plastic piping systems include:
  • Ease of installation
  • Corrosion resistance
  • Safety of potable water
  • Reliable fitting and joining options
  • Light weight, ease of transportation and handling
  • Long-term reliability proven over decades of use around the world
Note: In these applications, "tubing" refers to products whereby the actual Outside Diameter is 1/8 inch larger than the nominal size, and "pipe" refers to products whereby the actual Outside Diameter matches that of steel pipe of the same nominal size, or products where the actual OD matches the nominal size. In both cases, dimensional tolerances are specified within relevant standards.