Steel is replacing copper in our drinking water tubes

When shopping for specialist tubing, you need to work with someone who can handle your orders. Our team can do that with ease. This is possible because we have been working in the tubing industry for many years. As the top ERW steel tube supplier West Midlands has, you can count on us to meet your needs.

For a long time, there have been discussions about the possible role of stainless steels in succeeding copper. This is in replacing the tubes that supply our drinking water. What we are going to do is dive deeper into the subject to offer you more of an insight.

The copper side

Let’s start by discussing copper. This is a metal that people have been using for ages in order to move their drinking water. It is malleable and soft thanks to its face-centred cubic atomic lattice. Moreover, it provides good corrosion resistance. That is why many people have this kind of pipe in their home.

However copper it is coming under scrutiny more and more. This is due to the ions you can find in the drinking water. There are concerns that they can undermine public health. As a result people are thinking of using a different metal.

Comparing the metals

ERW steel tube supplier West MidlandsNow, let’s compare copper to stainless steel. Copper is a metal that is not difficult to process and manufacture. It is, after all, ductile and soft. You can connect it to other fittings and attachments with ease. This is possible by using soft soldering or compression fittings.

Things are not as straightforward with stainless steel. Soldering here is something that only experts should handle. For this reason, there are a number of specialist compression fittings to produce connections. This is done with the aid of tongs.

One benefit of the fittings is that it is far quicker to create them, requiring less time than copper soldering. There is no need for you to wait for your connection to cool off. Moreover, this approach eradicates the risk of leaks. This issue normally occurs because of bad soldering. In other words, there is an improvement in quality here.

An expensive but worthwhile investment

One of the things we know as the top ERW steel tube supplier West Midlands clients can work with it that stainless can be costly. This is especially true when you compare to the price of copper. However, if you think about all of the details, the final price won’t be that much different. You need to consider the financial setbacks of using copper, including the maintenance costs and the risk of big bills if there is a leak.

The ERW steel tube supplier West Midlands customers trust

At Union Steel Tubes, we like to keep products available in a number of qualities and sizes. This gives our customers the optimum choice of tube. Not to mention, we carefully test every product before they are allowed to leave us. This keeps the quality very high.

So, if you would like assistance from the best ERW steel tube supplier West Midlands has, contact us today. You can tell us what application you have in mind and we can suggest what type of tubing to use.