Leak in waterpipe due to Electrolysis?

[Brooktrout]

Have a three year old home with plastic water lines everywhere, but where the brass shut off valves are. The fittings around these valves keep developing pin hole leaks. The plumber says it's electolisis. I've heard of this before. Any Ideas on how to find and fix?

 

[kwired]

Have a three year old home with plastic water lines everywhere, but where the brass shut off valves are. The fittings around these valves keep developing pin hole leaks. The plumber says it's electolisis. I've heard of this before. Any Ideas on how to find and fix?

More details on what you have for the "fittings around those valves" please.

If you mix copper and zinc (zinc coated) fittings together you have created a battery cell and can easily have electrolysis issues.

Brass fittings in brass valves should not have this problem.

 

[tkb]

When the answer is unknown, it's always an electrical problem.
It can't possibly be the cheap Chinese fittings.

 

[drcampbell]

If the water chemistry is aggressive and dissimilar metals in contact with each other, you might have corrosion due to electrolysis.
If the house is plumbed with plastic pipe, there aren't any stray currents flowing, the problem is not electrical in nature and there's nothing that an electrician can do to remedy this problem.

 

[Dzboyce]

What's the PH of your water? Have some water testing done. You're interested in finding out the Langlier corrosivity index. Your water could be leaching the copper out of your fittings. Do you have any blue staining in your fixtures?

Flint Michigan in a nutshell. Water source was changed. Lower PH. Higher Langlier index. Started leaching lead out of existing pipes. The lead was in the pipes the whole time, but the previous water source didn't leach it out of the pipes.

 

[JFletcher]

Was the plumber who said it was electrolysis the same who installed the pipe 3 years ago?

I looked up "leaking PEX connections", got a few hits:

https://www.nachi.org/forum/f22/leaks-cross-linked-polyethylene-connections-advice-needed-76622/

post #6 leads to this:

http://www.plumbingfittingsettlement.com/

It's possible a home built 3 years ago has those fittings in it.

DIY crimps are also a probably cause of leaks.

PEX piping (which is what you have; too new to be Qest) is non-conductive; the only electrolysis that can happen is between dissimilar metals or water chemistry way out of whack. If it's bad crimps or fittings, that's on the plumber.

Electricity is not causing your problem.

 

[Dennis Alwon]

It can very well be voltage on the water lines... Is the line coming into the house copper? If the copper and brass are connected and current available you can have galvanic corrosion. I am no expert but, I believe, the dissimilar metals with electrolytes can cause corrosion