PEX tubing has been approved for plumbing by the California Building Standards Commission. This is the second time that the plumbing has been approved for the use in portable water systems. The first time the tubing was approved, it came under fire from a group named the Coalition for Safe Building Materials. They sued the Building Standards Commission, delaying the use of PEX plumbing in homes.

It was originally approved in January 2009, but did not become a part of the code until August of that same year. Because of the lawsuit, the material was repealed from the code until the court case was through. Now, the plumbing can be used in residential homes, commercial buildings, schools, hospitals, and other public buildings.

Although the state had been against it, 180 counties within the state had already approved the substance for use after copper has risen in price. PEX is much easier to install and requires less man hours to install a full system. This is because PEX is flexible in nature and can easy be bent to make the process of running lines easier.

The use of PEX has been reinstated with the understanding that underground PEX pipes must be sleeved. With that small change, PEX was found to meet all other criteria of a safe plumbing material. The only real change is that when PEX tubing is placed underground and is used to feet appliances in the home or for faucets and drinking water, it first must be sleeved. There are also a number of performance requirements that must be met in certain situations. For instance, if PEX is going to be installed in a recirculating hot water system, the tubing must meet the ASTM F876-08 performance requirements. PEX brass fitting must also meet or exceed the NSF 14-2009 requirements that prevent dezincification of the tubes. These requirement also protects the tubes from stress crack corrosion.

The approval of PEX for the second time is a huge win for companies in the PEX industry. Although there was very little evidence to suggest that using PEX pipes in the home was unsafe, the repeal of earlier approvals drastically hurt many businesses that had made plans to operate within the state of California. As it stands, all PEX pipe that is used or installed in California must also provide a minimum of a thirty day UV protection period, which protects the consumer from possible pitfalls of the product.