Hey Ione,
"...........In the case of a plastic pipe the thermal conductivity is low but the wall thickness is low as well, so the lumped model should be applicable."
Your quote of Mar 29.
I only commented because someone ( like you at that writing and me for accepting it at the time) may think that a "thin" section meets the "lumped" requirement and also that the magnitude of the the error could be game changing.
So we now all agree that Biot number MUST be small for the lumped model but how small is still at issue; so why not use the more exact solution found in the plots I found. It only takes a few more minutes of work to get an accurate answer, since the "error" in using the "lumped" solution cannot be readily quantified for Biot values that are "small".