In our last post, we discussed why flexible plastic tubing is in such high demand in medical contexts. The main point was this: human beings move around a lot, and if a human being has to be connected to a tube, that tube had better not inhibit that motion or be susceptible to damage because of it. Flexible tubing is an excellent choice when there is a need for tubing that connects two things that are likely to move relative to each other. However, there are many situations in which rigid plastic tubing, not flexible tubing, is a more desirable choice. Let’s go over some of those situations.

I live in an old Victorian house that was converted into four separate apartments. Over the years, as changes have been made to the house, a Rube Goldberg system of wiring and piping has emerged, and the likely number of coding near-violations in my basement would be enough to set off any city inspector with an itchy trigger finger (I guess itchy pen-clicking thumb would be more appropriate). Of particular concern (to me, at least) is our plumbing system, which seems to be composed primarily of cast-iron pipes. Generally, when I want to use the hot water from the kitchen tap for something, I have to let the water run for about 15 seconds before the stream’s color becomes clear. I suspect that those pipes could stand to be replaced. If they were replaced, I would hope that they would be replaced with rigid plastic tubing. Plastic because it’s less likely to contaminate the water with itself, and rigid because it wouldn’t make sense for it to be flexible.

Imagine if you lived in a house with an unfinished basement that had flexible plastic plumbing tubing hung from the ceiling. Every time you’d make use of an appliance connected to the tubing, the tubing would bounce around or maybe even bow with the weight of the materials traveling through them. Rigid plastic tubing is the clear winner when it comes to applications in which the tubing product is not expected to move at all.