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Need For Third-Party Safety
Certification
According to many newspaper articles, lax
U.S. and Canadian import regulations allowed unscrupulous manufacturers to
export toxic building materials. Cheap, recycled copper, brass water tube
and fittings from China, Mexico, Asia, Korea and other countries have found
their way into many consumer products.
Effective January 2010, California &
Vermont outlawed lead in brass, yet other states have allowed such products
to continue POLLUTING both
potable and waste water.
Consequently, there exist billions of
dollars worth of toxic plumbing products in the U.S. alone; including
GFX-like products sold by unscrupulous companies. Because a GFX must handle
both drinking and waste water, they require special third-party
safety-certifications to guarantee meeting the following criteria:
·
Copper coils, drainpipes must be NSF-61 certified that every GFX complies
with ASTM
B88 & ASTM
B306 specifications & standards. They must be lead free if
installed in California or Vermont.
·
Every GFX must have vented, double-wall
construction to eliminate cross-contamination issues. This
safety-requirement prohibits direct
soldering of coils to drainpipes; another reason gravity film
heat exchangers made by Renewability,
WaterCycles, ECO-GFX and others cannot be certified for
use with potable water, yet hundreds have counterfeit UL labels.
·
Canada doesn’t recognize the NSF-61
leaching standard, but does require a third-party safety-certification.
Some copper manufacturers provide doubly-certified copper tubing that can
be used in the U.S & Canada; with both NSF-61 & Warnock Hersey incise marks, for example.
NOTES
Every multi-coil GFX sold
by the GFX Store
uses copper and/or lead-free brass fittings. SharkBite and/or Q-Bite fittings are
available on “S”, “P” & “MPP Models to lower installation costs;
especially with PEX water tube. Removable SharkBites allow S-Model
coil connections to be rotated or modified to
simplify installation.
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Safety Warnings
Antidumping tariffs should end trafficking in
counterfeit copper, brass & GFX products such as those sold by: Power-Pipe
by RENEWABILITY & DOUCETTE
INDUSTRIES, GFX-Lite by
WATERCYCLES & ECO-GFX &
THERMODRAIN by ECOINNOVATION.
·
The
latter pair are DWHRMA members falsely claiming: ”No 3rd Party certification
(example: UL, ETL, INTERTEK or CSA) standard exists for Drain Water Heat
Recovery”;
after Intertek de-listed Watercycles
·
All
existing, uncertified counterfeits should be recalled if made with
uncertified, dumped-copper discovered by American & Canadian
investigators, e.g.: “Four Copper Tube Actions were filed in October
2004 in state court in California and were consolidated to become the
Indirect-Purchaser Plumbing Tube Action” & “Canadian Dumping and Countervail Investigation…In June 2006, the Canada Border Services Agency
(CBSA) initiated an investigation into the alleged dumping of certain
copper pipe fittings from the United States and from South Korea, and the
dumping and subsidizing of these same goods from China. The
Company and certain affiliated companies were identified by the CBSA as
exporters and importers of these goods.”
Conservation-minded consumers must be made aware of many consumer
complaints ignored by the same health officials that allow “dumping”, e.g.:
·
”This Powerpipe is an illegal copy of the original GFX.
The Powerpipe also uses recycled copper that is not recommended for potable
water by the US and Canadian copper association due to contamination.”
·
“Powerpipe
is made with recycled copper from China…How does HOMEDEPOT EXPLAIN THIS?”...”Purchased
this and found out the building inspector refused to authorize it.
Something to do with the fact the UL certification is not applicable to potable
water and since the device does not have ASTMB88 stamped on its copper, it
was not considered safe for potable water.” & “You did purchase a couple of 2” units in which we used
copper that was not ASTM B88 but ACR.”
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