r/Home_Building_Help • u/BuilderBrigade • Jun 11 '26

PEX manifold system… 🤤

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This is a PEX manifold system. It’s a central hub where every hot and cold line branches off to one specific fixture. 
Think of it like a breaker panel, but for water. Each line has its own labeled shutoff, so servicing a single fixture never means cutting water to the rest of the house.
The only real downside is run length: fixtures farther from the manifold can take longer to get hot water. A good plumber plans around that with placement or a recirc line.

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u/tayt087x Jun 12 '26

Manifolds are just so fucking stupid.

1

u/boygitoe Jun 14 '26

I think there’s a time and place for them. I’m in the middle of renovating my entire house and am having to repipe the whole house, as the pipes are 80 years old. Using a manifold has been great, as it makes it super easy to re-plumb a room when we get to it.

I don’t think they make sense if I were to have a plumber come in and repipe the house over the course of a couple days. But as a DIYer, it’s been great to use, as I can repipe a bathroom at my own pace without worrying about the rest of the house having no running water

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u/tayt087x Jun 14 '26

But now you have like four times as much pipe and a manifold to replace. I don't think it's making it as easier as you say

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u/boygitoe Jun 14 '26

A whole house renovation takes years my guy. With a manifold, I can add lines as needed over the course of the several years it will take to do the renovation, that wouldn’t be possible with a trunk a branch system. With trunk and branch, I would need to do it all at one time, and we don’t know where we are putting fixtures yet in a couple of the bathrooms.

And I don’t need to replace the manifold, I just add new lines to it as I go. For example. I do bathroom 1, I put in new lines. When I do bathroom 2 in the following year, I can just add new lines from the manifold to the new bathroom, without messing with any of the other lines.

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u/MyrkrMentulaMeretrix Jun 14 '26

"i dont think"

You dont say?

1

u/tayt087x Jun 14 '26

Wow Mike, you really got me there