5-layer, steel, and conduit pipe prices: per meter or per branch?

Nearly every mechanical tender list has a few pipe lines on it: 5-layer (PEX-AL-PEX) pipe for water supply and heating, steel pipe for the boiler room and main runs, and corrugated conduit for electrical routing. They look like one family, but they follow three completely different pricing logics: brand sets the price of 5-layer pipe, the steel market plus schedule and wall thickness set the price of steel pipe, and size and footage set the price of conduit. Price all three with the same eye and your bid will limp somewhere — you either lose expensive or win cheap and bleed during execution.

5-layer pipe: the brand sets the per-meter price

Five-layer pipe (PEX-AL-PEX) is quoted per meter, and its biggest price variable is not size but brand: for the same size — say 16 mm — the per-meter gap between well-known brands and second-tier ones can be severalfold. That gap isn't random; behind it are the quality of the aluminum layer and its weld, the pressure and temperature rating, and the warranty standing behind it. Size is the second variable; from 16 up to 32 mm, the per-meter price climbs with the diameter. To see where the market stands today, check the current 5-layer pipe price with the source and date of each quote.

• A cheaper brand often carries a lower pressure and temperature rating; maybe enough for cold water, not for heating.
• The real cost is pipe plus fittings; each brand's press or compression fittings are separate and sometimes cost more than the pipe itself.
• Five-layer pipe goes inside walls; one leak and the cost of tearing the wall open is many times whatever the cheaper pipe saved.
• Many tenders come with an approved-vendor list; the price of a brand that won't be approved is effectively no price at all.

Steel pipe: it follows the steel market, plus schedule and wall thickness

With steel pipe, brand matters far less and the price moves day to day with the steel market — sheet and billet rates — the same behavior you know from rebar and I-beams. Three variables drive it: how it's made (welded, or seamless — "Mannesmann" in the Iranian market), the diameter, and the schedule, i.e. the wall thickness. A seamless schedule-40 pipe costs far more than a light welded one of the same diameter, because the production process differs and each branch weighs more. The sales unit is usually the 6-meter branch, and some sellers quote per kilogram. As an example, see the price of 2-inch seamless schedule-40 steel pipe right now with its source and date.

Corrugated conduit: a small item, a big footage

Electrical conduit is the cheapest line in this section but usually the highest-volume one: a mid-size building consumes thousands of meters of it, so any small error in the per-meter price gets multiplied by the footage. Its price is set by the material (PVC or polyamide), the size (13.5, 16, 21, …), and whether it's plain or flame-retardant, and it's sold by the coil — 50 meters, for example. You can also check the corrugated conduit price with each seller's source and date.

Meter, branch, or coil? Unify the units first

• 5-layer is quoted per meter, steel per 6-meter branch (or per kilo), conduit per coil; convert everything to a per-meter price before comparing anything.
• Divide the steel branch price by 6; and never compare a per-kilo quote without knowing the weight of a branch.
• Divide the coil price by the coil's footage; coils don't all have the same length.
• An unusually cheap price usually belongs to another size, schedule, or brand — or to a different unit.

How to price the pipe section of a tender list fast

Putting all this together, a few pipe lines mean comparing brand, schedule, size, and unit correctly at the same time — in a market where steel prices move daily and a price you took last week is no longer defensible today. The fast route is to skip the line-by-line inquiry and price the pipe rows along with the rest of the list in one go from a spreadsheet, getting one current price with source and date back per line; the step-by-step method is in the guide to bulk price inquiry with Excel.

How Price Finder prices the pipe lines

Price Finder takes each line in your own words — "16 mm 5-layer pipe", "2-inch seamless schedule 40" — searches Torob, Digikala, Emalls, and Google at once, reads the live price off the seller's own site, uses AI to tell the right size and schedule from the wrong one, drops outlier and stale prices, and returns one trustworthy current price per line with its source and date. You also get a day-by-day price history chart, so you know whether the market is heading up or down — and you close your bid on today's number, not last week's archive.