How can I change planes with a row of copper water pipes?

Question

I have five 3/4 copper water lines coming into my mechanicals room along the ceiling - so they are nicely lined up in a horizontal plane, parallel to the plane of the ceiling.

However, our manifolds and valves, etc., are all on unistrut which are on the wall.

So these copper lines need to change planes from running horizontal on the ceiling to running vertically on the wall.

The obvious way to do this is by adding 2+ welds to each line and reducing flow/psi with 2+ 90 elbows on each line.  This will work.

However, are there nicer, more elegant ways to change the plane of a group of copper pipes ?

Another thought I had was to terminate them all with sharkbite couplers and put in pex "leaders" to connect the pipes coming in onto the manifold wall ... that would be a very nice, wide sweep for the water and we could cut them all exactly the right length and maybe bundle them or something ...

Again, I am wondering:  is there a "right" way to do this that stays all copper and doesn't jig-jag it through a bunch of 90s (and extra welds) ?

Thanks.

Greg Hill · Answer

I think the average plumber would use straight pipe with 90° elbows and call it a day. "Right" to the plumber is whatever is good enough to do the job adequately, safely, and reliably. To do more takes too much labor (time). The flow restriction in a residential setting should be immaterial -- and if it weren't, they'd increase the pipe size rather than hand crafting sweeps. That said, if you want to make hand crafted sweeps for aesthetics and optimal flow, there's nothing wrong with that.

PEX is an easy way to do it, although PEX tube does have its own ideas about where it wants to bend. You'd have to ensure you have enough space to respect the minimum bend radius (somewhere in the vicinity of 5", but it varies among products and manufacturers). You may need to use molded bend supports, clips, etc. Also, the cost of push-on fittings like Sharkbite will add up. Consider using sweat adapters instead: solder the adapter to the copper pipe, then after it's cool the PEX can be attached on the barb.

Bent copper pipe would look neat. I've never seen it done, but that's probably only because it's not commercially reasonable (ie cost effective) for professionals to do it that way.

How can I change planes with a row of copper water pipes?

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