Pipe Material Selection Matrix: 6 Systems Compared

The Problem With Every Pipe Material Selection Table You Have Already Read

Search for a pipe material selection matrix and you will find a hundred tables that all look the same. PP-R: 95 °C. CPVC: 93 °C. PE100: 82 °C. Copper: “high”. Steel: “very high”. They are laid out cleanly, they compare six or seven materials across five or six columns, and they are almost entirely unusable for specification work — because not one of those numbers tells you the two things that decide whether it applies to your line: for how long, and at what pressure.

That is not a pedantic complaint. It is the single most common way a material selection goes wrong. The number 95 °C attached to PP-R is real and it is in a standard — but in that standard it is a malfunction temperature with a total budget of 100 hours across a 50-year service life. Read as an operating rating, it is off by 25 °C and by roughly four orders of magnitude in duration. A designer who specifies PP-R for a continuous 90 °C circulating loop because “the chart said 95” has not made a marginal error. They have specified outside the standard entirely.

This page is the selection matrix rebuilt so that every cell carries its standard, its edition year, and the qualifier that makes it true. Six systems, five decision axes — temperature, pressure, jointing, application fit, and what we can actually supply — plus the caveats that turn a number from a marketing figure into a specifiable one. Where we could not verify a figure in a primary source, the cell says so instead of guessing. There are several such cells, and they are the most useful part of the table.

Two structural notes before the tables. First, our buyer’s decision guide to choosing a piping system covers the same six materials from the commercial angle — cost, market fit, what to specify for which job. This page is the standards layer underneath it, and where the two disagree on a number, this page is the one with the citation. Second, we manufacture pressure pipe to Φ110 mm and PP-R only in 20, 25 and 32 mm (per our catalogue). That constrains which rows of this matrix we can quote against, and we have marked it explicitly rather than letting you discover it at the quotation stage.

1. The Axis Everyone Gets Wrong: Temperature Is Three Numbers, Not One

ISO 10508:2006, the classification standard for plastics piping in hot and cold water installations inside buildings, does not give a material a temperature. It gives an application class three temperatures, each with a duration attached:

• T_D — design temperature. The continuous operating temperature, held for a stated number of years. This is the number that belongs in a selection matrix.
• T_max — maximum design temperature. A higher temperature the system is expected to see for a limited period, typically measured in years but far fewer of them.
• T_mal — malfunction temperature. The highest temperature reached when the control limits of the system are exceeded. ISO 10508:2006 clause 3.3 defines it as an excursion condition, and the standard budgets it at a total of 100 hours across the whole 50-year life.

Here is the classification table, quoted from ISO 10508:2006 Table 1. This is the table almost every published PP-R specification is sold against, and almost no published selection matrix reproduces honestly.

Three things fall out of this table that change how you specify.

The 95 °C figure is a 100-hour allowance, not a rating. For Class 1 and Class 2 — which is to say for the overwhelming majority of PP-R hot-water systems on the market — 95 °C is T_mal, occurring up to a total of 100 hours over 50 years (ISO 10508:2006, clause 3.3 and Table 1). The continuous design temperature for the hotter of those two classes is 70 °C. If a supplier’s datasheet, or a selection chart, presents “PP-R: 95 °C” without the word malfunction next to it, that document is misrepresenting the standard it cites. We have published that number ourselves in earlier material and it is one of the reasons this page exists.

Class 4 and Class 5 design temperatures are profiles, not single values. An under-floor heating system to Class 4 is not designed for one temperature — it is designed for 20 °C for two and a half years, then 40 °C for twenty, then 60 °C for twenty-five. Any single-number comparison of “PP-R for under-floor heating” against another material has already discarded the shape of the duty.

Class 3 comes with a condition attached. ISO 10508:2006 Table 1 footnote c permits Class 3 only where the malfunction temperature cannot rise above 65 °C. It is not a class you select by preference; it is a class you qualify for by demonstrating that the control system cannot overshoot. Where a Class 3 line could see a higher excursion, the correct selection is Class 4.

One further clause matters for anyone shortening the design life to save wall thickness. ISO 10508:2006 clause 4 requires that where the specified service life is less than 50 years, all the times in Table 1 be reduced proportionately — except the malfunction time, which stays at 100 hours regardless. You cannot pro-rate your way out of the excursion allowance. A 25-year system still gets 100 hours of T_mal, not 50.

2. The Pressure Axis: Why “PN20” Is Not a Temperature-Independent Number

The second column of most selection matrices is a pressure class, given as though it were a property of the pipe. It is not. It is a property of the pipe at a stated temperature, and every one of the six systems below loses pressure capability as it heats up — at very different rates.

ISO 10508:2006 scopes hot and cold water plastics piping to design pressures up to at least 10 bar at 20 °C, and up to 10 bar at temperatures according to the class of application (clause 1). It also requires — and this is the clause that makes the classes comparable — that a system meeting any of the five classes must additionally be suitable for cold water for 50 years at 20 °C and 10 bar (clause 4). Every class carries that cold-water floor underneath it.

ISO 15874-2:2013, the PP pipes part, then puts numbers on how much wall you need. It covers design pressures p_D of 4, 6, 8 and 10 bar cross-referenced to the same application classes (clause 1 and clause 6.1, Tables 1–4). Its output is S_calc,max, the maximum calculated pipe series — and because a lower S means a thicker wall, the table reads as a difficulty ranking:

This table is the strongest technical argument in the whole matrix, and it is an argument for a material we do not currently list. At 10 bar, PP-RCT outperforms PP-R in every application class, and the gap is widest exactly where hot-water systems live: Class 2 (2,1 versus 3,4) and Class 5 (1,9 versus 2,9). If your duty is sustained hot water or high-temperature heating at 10 bar, there is a defensible standards-based basis for specifying PP-RCT over PP-R rather than a marketing one. We do not currently offer PP-RCT and we are not going to argue you out of it on a Class 2 or Class 5 line.

And this table rules out part of our own range, so we will do the arithmetic before you do. Our PP-R is PN20 in three sizes — 20×2,8, 25×3,5 and 32×4,4 mm (per our catalogue). Pipe series is S = (d_n/e_n − 1)/2, so those three sizes are S = 3,07, S = 3,07 and S = 3,14 respectively. Set against the S_calc,max column above, that means (the full size and fitting breakdown is on our PP-R pipe and fittings page):

• Class 2 at 10 bar requires S ≤ 2,1. Our wall is S ≈ 3,1. On 25 mm that is 3,5 mm of wall where S = 2,1 would demand about 4,8 mm. Our PP-R is not suitable for Class 2 sustained 70 °C hot water at a 10 bar design pressure, and we do not offer it for that duty.
• Class 5 at 10 bar requires S ≤ 1,9. Further outside our wall again. Same answer: not our product.
• Class 1 at 10 bar requires S ≤ 3,0. Our S ≈ 3,07–3,14 sits just outside even this, so we do not claim Class 1 at the full 10 bar design pressure either.

What PN20 does mean is a 20 °C rating: ISO 10508:2006 clause 4 puts a cold-water floor of 50 years at 20 °C and 10 bar under every class, and our wall carries that comfortably. The constraint bites as design pressure and temperature rise together. Because S_calc,max relaxes as design pressure drops, the honest framing is that our PP-R is a hot-and-cold building water pipe specified at a design pressure below 10 bar, and the specific p_D we can support against a named class is a question for our technical team with your duty in hand — not a number we are going to assert on a web page. If your submittal names Class 2 or Class 5 at 10 bar, buy PP-RCT, or buy PP-R at S = 2,1 from someone who makes that wall. We do not.

Behind those numbers sits the test basis. ISO 15874-2:2013 clause 4.2 requires PP-R material to be evaluated per ISO 9080 with hydrostatic reference curves verified at 20 °C, 60–70 °C and 95 °C, with at least 97,5 % of experimental results on or above the reference line. That is where PP-R’s temperature ratings come from — extrapolated hydrostatic strength curves at three verification temperatures, not a single short-term test.

3. The Six-System Selection Matrix

Now the table itself. Read a row to understand a system; read the temperature column down to see how little the six materials have in common. Every figure carries its source and its qualifier. Where the honest answer is that we could not verify a number in a primary source, the cell says not verified and gives the reason — because a blank you can see is worth more than a number you cannot trace.

4. The Jointing Axis: The Column That Quietly Decides the Other Four

Jointing appears in most matrices as a one-word column — “fusion”, “solvent”, “threaded” — as though it were a note about installation labour. (For the fitting families and thread standards behind each method, see types of pipe fittings.) On the copper row above it is the column that sets the entire pressure envelope, and the same principle applies more widely than most specifiers allow for.

The copper case is the clearest because the numbers are published. EN 1057:2006 specifies requirements, sampling, test methods and delivery conditions for seamless round copper tube from OD 6 mm up to and including 267 mm, for hot and cold water distribution, hot water heating including panel heating, domestic gas and liquid fuel, and waste water sanitation (clause 1). What it does not contain, anywhere, is a maximum operating temperature or a pressure rating. Any claim of the form “copper is rated to X °C per EN 1057” is unsupported by that standard. The governing limit is the joint.

And the joint spread is enormous. From CDA Copper Tube Handbook Table 4, for the 1/8–1 inch size band:

Read the spread carefully, because it is not a single ratio. Comparing brazing filler against 50-50 solder, CDA Table 4 gives the brazed joint no separate pressure rating at 100–250 °F — it refers you back to the annealed-tube rating in Table 3 — so the only like-for-like figure in that row is saturated steam, where brazing gives 120 psi against 15 psi for either solder, a factor of 8. Between the two solders, however, the gap closes as conditions get harsher: Sb5 beats Sn50 by about 5,4× at 100 °F (1090 versus 200 psi), but on saturated steam both are rated 15 psi and the choice of solder buys you nothing at all. The lesson is not “better filler, proportionally better joint” — it is that on steam service only brazing moves the number, and a specification that upgrades solder alloy while expecting a steam-duty improvement has bought nothing. Two further notes from the same table are worth carrying into a specification: for continuous operation above 250 °F, or wherever the highest joint strength is required, brazing filler metals should be used; and for extremely low working temperatures in the 0 °F to −200 °F range, a joint material melting at or above 1100 °F is recommended (CDA Table 4, NOTE and note 6).

The plastics equivalent of this problem is that fusion is a process, not a product. Socket fusion, butt fusion and electrofusion each have a parameter window — heating temperature, heating time, changeover time, cooling time under restraint — that varies with diameter and with material. We looked specifically for a citable parameter table tied to diameter and material and did not find one we could publish. DVS 2207, ISO 21307 and ASTM F2620 are the documents that carry those parameters and are referenced by name in PPI TN-11, but none of them was retrievable in full. We are therefore not publishing fusion temperatures, heating times or cooling times on this page, because an isolated process number without its diameter and material conditions is the kind of figure that gets a joint made wrong. Ask the manufacturer whose pipe you are welding, and weld to their window.

One compliance point that belongs here rather than in a footnote: ISO 10508:2006 clause 4 requires that plastics pipes and fittings be connected directly to a heat-generating source only when the manufacturer recommends it, and that heating installations use only water or treated water as the transfer fluid. That clause quietly voids a fair number of installed PP-R heating systems.

5. Which Standard Governs — Because the Same Material Sits Under Different Regimes

A selection matrix that lists materials without stating which regime they are being selected under is only half a matrix. The same PP pipe is governed by different standards depending on whether it is carrying domestic hot water in a building or cooling water in a power plant, and the application classes, test regimes and acceptance criteria differ.

ISO 21003-1:2008 carries a boundary rule that resolves a recurring specification argument. Solid-wall pipes with thin outer protection or barrier layers are not covered by ISO 21003 — they fall under ISO 15874-2, ISO 15875-2 or ISO 15876-2 as appropriate, provided the total outer layer thickness including adhesive is ≤0,4 mm (clause 1). So an oxygen-barrier PE-X pipe with a 0,3 mm outer layer is not a multilayer pipe in the standard’s sense, and calling for ISO 21003 compliance on it is a category error. Above 0,4 mm, it is.

6. Temperature Derating: The Numbers, and Where They Come From

Two of the six systems have published, quotable derating tables. They are worth setting side by side because they behave so differently, and because one of them contains a row that is not what it appears to be.

Cell class matters when specifying CPVC for hot duty. CPVC 4120-06 derates less severely than 4120-05 from 60 °C upward (at 32 °C the two are equal at 0,91) — 0,57 versus 0,50 at 60 °C, 0,44 versus 0,40 at 71 °C, 0,31 versus 0,25 at 82 °C (PPI TN-62 Table 1). A specification that says only “CPVC” has left roughly 10–25 % of hot-end pressure capability undefined — 14 % at 60 °C, 10 % at 71 °C, and 24 % at 82 °C, so the penalty for leaving the cell class unstated grows precisely where the duty is hardest. Note also that TN-62 is explicitly a pressure-service document: it states CPVC systems are pressure-rated for operation up to 200 °F (93 °C) per the industry product standards (clause 3.0). That distinction matters enormously in the next section.

On the PVC side, PIPA TN003 permits interpolation between listed temperatures, so a PN16 PVC-U pipe at 40 °C is limited to about 11,2 bar. But two caveats attach to that table and both change how you use it:

The 50 °C row is not an ISO value. PIPA TN003 states that its derating factors were selected from ISO 4422.2 and that the table was extended from 45 °C up to 50 °C by PIPA. The 50 °C row is an association extrapolation. Do not attribute it to ISO, and be cautious about leaning on it in a submittal that will be checked against ISO references.

Derate on wall temperature, not fluid temperature. PIPA TN003 defines the design operating temperature for PVC derating as the average temperature of the pipe wall. Where a differential exists across the wall it may be taken as the mean of internal and external surface temperatures, and for buried pipe carrying flowing water the note gives T_m = (2T_w + T_s)/3, where T_w is the water temperature and T_s the soil temperature (TN003, p. 2). For a buried line in hot ground this is not a rounding difference — it is the difference between derating on 25 °C and derating on 35 °C.

7. The Caveats That Void Half the Numbers in Circulation

This section exists because the most valuable thing a selection matrix can do is tell you which of the numbers you already have are being used outside the conditions they were published under. Four of these are traps we have watched buyers walk into.

PPI TN-11 is a non-pressure document. Its 2021 Table 1 gives maximum and minimum operating temperatures for a long list of materials — PP-R, PP-B and PP-RCT at −10 °C to 90 °C; PP-H at 0 °C to 90 °C; PE100 at −40 °C to 82 °C; PEX at −50 °C to 93 °C; PVC at −18 °C to 66 °C; CPVC at −40 °C to 104 °C; PVDF at −18 °C to 120 °C. Those figures circulate widely as though they were pressure-pipe ratings. They are not. TN-11 clause 2.1 states the limits apply only to non-pressure service — systems not fully charged, with static head never exceeding 15 psig — and clause 2.3 states that minimum and maximum operating temperatures for pressurised applications are not listed in the document. Quoting TN-11’s 82 °C for PE100, or its 104 °C for CPVC, as a pressure rating is a misuse of the source.

The correct PE100 number for a selection matrix is 60 °C, not 82 °C. The Georg Fischer PE100 technical handbook states polyethylene pipes can be used from −58 °F to +140 °F (−50 °C to +60 °C), and its general properties table lists maximum operating temperature 140 °F (60 °C) (pp. 6 and 9). That is the pressure-service figure. The same handbook notes that at higher temperatures the tensile strength and stiffness of PE are reduced, so a pressure-temperature diagram must be consulted — meaning 60 °C is a ceiling, not a temperature at which full PN is retained. We looked for a numeric per-temperature derating factor table for PE100 in pressure service and could not obtain one from an authoritative source; the GF diagram is a figure, not extractable text. We have no factors to publish and are not inventing any.

The widely repeated “PVC-U maximum service temperature 45 °C” is unverified. We went looking for it in a primary source and did not find one. ISO 1452-2:2009 itself was not retrievable. The PIPA TN003 derating table we did open derives from the superseded ISO 4422.2 and runs to 50 °C, not 45 °C. PPI TN-11 gives 66 °C but explicitly for non-pressure service only. Three sources, three different numbers, and none of them is EN ISO 1452. Treat 45 °C as unverified and get the limit from the pipe manufacturer for the specific compound.

We are publishing no steel temperature or pressure figures. EN 10255 is a dimensional and material standard for non-alloy tubes suitable for welding and threading; it does not define operating temperature or pressure ratings. The only sources carrying steel temperature claims that we could reach were vendor and distributor pages, none traceable to a standard, and no accessible ASHRAE Handbook or EN primary source was retrievable. A steel range should not go into a selection matrix without ASME B31.9 or an ASHRAE Handbook chapter in hand, and we do not have one.

Stainless press-fitting O-ring limits are manufacturer claims, not standards. The EPDM ~120 °C and FKM ~200 °C figures that appear in press-fit selection guidance came back, in our search, only from manufacturer and vendor marketing pages, with no EN or ISO source located — and the sources conflicted on whether 120 °C was a peak or a continuous rating. No number from us.

And one on our own printing. Our HDPE pipe body is marked “GERMANY STANDARD DIN8077/8078”. Those numbers are the PP standards; the PE equivalents are DIN 8074/8075. We report what the pipe is marked and we do not claim the pipe is made to or conforms to DIN 8077/8078. If your inspector checks the marking against the material, expect the question, and ask us for the actual test documentation rather than relying on the print.

8. What We Can and Cannot Supply Against This Matrix

A selection matrix from a manufacturer is only useful if it tells you where that manufacturer stops. Ours stops early, and in a way that rules us out of a large share of the projects that will land on this page.

Read plainly: our pressure pipe stops at Φ110 mm, and our PP-R stops at 32 mm. If your matrix row calls for a DN150 to DN400 main, a large-diameter riser, or PP-R above 32 mm, we cannot supply it and there is no configuration in which we can. We would rather you learn that from this page than from a quotation three weeks into a tender.

Within those ceilings, though, the wall thicknesses are published in full and every size is a real catalogue line — no interpolation and no reverse-engineering from an SDR equation is involved anywhere on this page. The same walls are repeated on the UPVC and CPVC 806 and PVC 902 drainage pages, and if you need the DN, SDR and PN vocabulary itself pinned down, our pipe sizing charts do that:

PP-R is the same story in three rows rather than nine: 20×2,8, 25×3,5 and 32×4,4 mm. Those three sizes are the whole range — not a published sample of a wider one — which is why §2 could compute the pipe series directly from the published wall and state plainly which application classes we do not serve. Computing S from a wall we publish is arithmetic on real product data; inventing a wall from an assumed S would be the opposite, and we do not do that anywhere on this page.

Where a wall genuinely is unpublished we say so and mean it: our PEX range is catalogued by diameter only, with no wall thickness and no pressure class stated, and our brass fittings are sized by thread designation rather than wall. Those two are real gaps and we will not fill them with a calculation.

Certification-wise we hold SKZ, CE, WRAS, DVGW, SGS, ISO 9001 and ISO 14001. Certificate numbers are Coming soon; where a tender requires the numbers themselves, ask us and we will chase the documents rather than typing a plausible string into a submittal.

One catalogue point on material composition, because it comes up in every serious technical audit: our PP-R uses recycled content of ≤10 % with quality unaffected (per our catalogue). We state it rather than being asked.

9. How to Actually Use This Matrix: Five Questions in Order

The matrix is a lookup table, but material selection is a sequence. In our experience quoting against drawings from a wide range of markets, the errors cluster at steps 1 and 2 — and by step 3 they are expensive to unwind. This ordering is our working opinion, not a standard requirement.

• 1. What is the continuous temperature, and for how many years? Not the peak. Not the boiler setpoint. The temperature the pipe actually sits at, with a duration. Map it to an ISO 10508:2006 class before you name a material. If the answer is a profile rather than a number, say so — Classes 4 and 5 are profiles.
• 2. What is the excursion, and can the controls prevent it? This is where T_mal and the Class 3 footnote live. If the control system can overshoot above 65 °C, Class 3 is unavailable to you regardless of what the normal operating temperature is.
• 3. What is the design pressure at that temperature — after derating? Take the factor from the material’s own published table, applied to wall temperature where the standard says wall temperature. A PN16 pipe is not a 16 bar pipe at 40 °C.
• 4. What joint, at what diameter? On copper this sets the rating outright and the rating falls with diameter. On plastics it sets whether you need a fusion crew, a solvent-cement regime with cure times, or a mechanical joint you can make with hand tools — which is exactly what the HDPE 603 and 604 compression series exist for (per our catalogue).
• 5. Which standard will the inspector check against? Building services or industrial. ISO 15874 and ISO 10508, or ISO 15494. Solid-wall or genuine multilayer, with the 0,4 mm boundary decided. Get this wrong and a technically correct system fails document review.

What We Could Not Verify, and Therefore Did Not Print

Collected in one place, because these gaps are load-bearing:

• Steel pipe temperature and pressure limits — no standard-traceable source obtained. No number given.
• PVC-U 45 °C maximum service temperature — three sources, three different figures, none of them EN ISO 1452. Unverified.
• PE100 per-temperature derating factors in pressure service — the 60 °C ceiling is verified; the factor table is not.
• Stainless press-fitting O-ring temperature limits — manufacturer marketing only, and mutually inconsistent.
• Fusion and welding process parameters — no full parameter table tied to diameter and material was retrievable. DVS 2207, ISO 21307 and ASTM F2620 are the right documents; go to them or to your pipe manufacturer.
• PEX “450 °C” resistance — circulating figure, not credible, not quoted by us.
• EN 12502 copper 110 °C hot-water limit — searched specifically; EN 12502-2 is corrosion-likelihood guidance and no such operating limit was found. The premise appears unfounded. Use the joint-governed CDA figures above instead.
• Our own PEX wall thicknesses and pressure class — our catalogue lists PEX by diameter only. Genuinely unpublished; ask us. (Wall thicknesses for UPVC/CPVC 806, HDPE, PVC 902 and PP-R are published in full and are tabulated in §8.)
• Our brass fittings pressure class — sized by thread designation, no pressure class published. Coming soon.
• Our certificate numbers — Coming soon.

Frequently Asked Selection Questions

Can PP-R run at 95 °C? Not continuously. Under ISO 10508:2006 Table 1, 95 °C is T_mal for Classes 1 and 2 — the malfunction temperature, budgeted at 100 hours total across the service life. The continuous design temperature for Class 2 is 70 °C for 49 years. A datasheet presenting 95 °C as an operating rating is misreading its own citation.

If I specify a 25-year design life instead of 50, does the malfunction allowance halve? No. ISO 10508:2006 clause 4 requires all times in Table 1 to be reduced proportionately when the specified service life is under 50 years, but the malfunction time remains 100 hours regardless.

Is PP-RCT worth specifying over PP-R? On Class 2 and Class 5 duty at 10 bar, on the standard’s own numbers, yes. ISO 15874-2:2013 gives PP-RCT S_calc,max of 3,4 and 2,9 against PP-R’s 2,1 and 1,9 in those classes (Tables 3 and 4) — a materially thinner wall for the same duty. We do not supply PP-RCT and we are telling you this anyway.

Does your own PP-R meet Class 2 at 10 bar? No. Our three sizes — 20×2,8, 25×3,5, 32×4,4 mm — work out to pipe series S ≈ 3,07–3,14 by S = (d_n/e_n − 1)/2, and ISO 15874-2:2013 Table 3 requires S ≤ 2,1 for Class 2 at a 10 bar design pressure. Our wall is thinner than that duty demands, so we do not offer it for Class 2 or Class 5 at 10 bar. It is a building hot-and-cold water pipe at lower design pressures, and it comfortably carries the 50-year, 20 °C, 10 bar cold-water floor that ISO 10508:2006 clause 4 places under every class. Send us the duty and we will tell you whether it fits rather than letting the PN20 marking imply more than it means.

What temperature is copper rated to? EN 1057:2006 does not give one. It is a dimensional and material standard. The ceiling comes from the joint and the diameter: 50-50 solder on 1/8–1 in tube is 200 psi at 100 °F and 85 psi at 250 °F, while brazed filler melting ≥1100 °F is not separately rated in that table — CDA refers you to the annealed-tube rating instead (CDA Copper Tube Handbook, Table 4). Always state diameter with a copper joint pressure figure.

Can I use PPI TN-11’s numbers for my pressure line? No. TN-11 clause 2.1 limits its table to non-pressure service with static head never exceeding 15 psig, and clause 2.3 states pressure-application temperature limits are not in the document.

Is a barrier-layer PE-X pipe a multilayer pipe? Only above 0,4 mm total outer layer thickness including adhesive. At or below that, ISO 21003-1:2008 clause 1 puts it under the base material standard — ISO 15874-2, 15875-2 or 15876-2 — not under ISO 21003.

Can you supply a DN200 main? No. Our pressure range ceilings at Φ110 mm across PP-R, UPVC/CPVC and HDPE, and PP-R is only 20, 25 and 32 mm (per our catalogue). We will say so at enquiry rather than quoting around it.

Where to Go Next

• How to choose a piping system: PPR vs PEX vs HDPE vs PVC/CPVC — the commercial and application-fit layer above this one. Where its temperature figures differ from this page, this page carries the citations.
• CPVC vs PPR for hot water — the head-to-head on the single most contested row of this matrix.
• Pipe sizing charts and pressure class reference — DN, NPS, SDR, schedule and PN defined, and why they do not convert into each other.
• UPVC Class 16 and PN 16 — when you actually need it — the pressure-class decision in detail for the 806 system.
• Types of pipe fittings — the jointing axis of this matrix expanded into six fitting families and the thread standards behind them.
• PPR pipe and fittings — PN20, three sizes, 1138 fittings series (75 items, per our catalogue).
• UPVC and CPVC 806 pipe and fittings — PN16, Φ20×2,0 to Φ110×7,2, 1806 series (203 items).
• HDPE pipe and fittings — PN16, Φ20×2,3 to Φ110×10, with 603/604 compression series.
• PVC 902 drainage — pipe Φ32–110 (non-pressure drainage only); 1902 fittings to Φ160 (non-pressure drainage only).
• PEX pipe — 2114 compression and 2121 press fitting series.
• Brass fittings and valves — 2405 series, 1/4″ to 1″, for plastic-to-metal transitions.
• Certifications — SKZ, CE, WRAS, DVGW, SGS, ISO 9001, ISO 14001; certificate numbers Coming soon.

Send Us the Duty, Not the Material

The most productive enquiries we receive do not name a material at all. They give us five things: the continuous operating temperature with its duration, the worst-case excursion and whether the controls can prevent it, the design pressure including pump shut-off and static head, the largest diameter in the scope, and the standard the inspector will check against at goods inwards. With those, the matrix above resolves to one or two rows and we can tell you which.

We can also tell you quickly when the answer is no. Above Φ110 mm, above 32 mm in PP-R, or on a steel or copper scope, we are not your supplier and we will say so in the first reply. Contact IFANNova with your duty conditions and we will come back with a material recommendation, the class it sits in, and an honest statement of what we can and cannot manufacture against it.

IFANNova is a French brand; manufacturing is by Zhuji Fengfan Piping, Zhuji, Zhejiang, China. Nothing in our range is made in France. 30+ years, 1000+ employees, 118+ countries, 120,000 m² facility.