Guitarhacker
I can work well with PVC and most of the fittings these days are pretty good. I installed a pair of PVC to copper fittings under a house I own..... it worked perfectly.....for several months. Then, one of them decided to fail..... resulting in a spray of water. I took it apart, examined it... it looked good, I cleaned it and put it back together..... epic spray..... tightened it.....epic spray....... went to Lowes to by a new one..... fixed.
Oh ... I didn't even tell you guys half the story ... prepare for a
really really good laugh ...
I basically flooded the laundry room because of these crappy connectors. First, the guy who is supposedly an 'expert' at the place where I got the connectors told me
NOT to use tape or dope on the screw on PEX fitting that converted the laundry hookup's pipes to PEX. Laundry hookups are threaded brass for some reason?
So, I crank everything down, run downstairs to the basement, and oh ... by the way, the door to the basement is on the other end of the house, down a flight of stairs. I see some drips from a few of the connectors in the basement, so I say, cool ... I can deal with that, I'll run upstairs and see what I got going at the laundry hookup. I turn around and all of a sudden there is a flood of water coming from around the toilet drain above my head. I shut off the main valve to the house and make a mad dash up the flight of stairs, to the other end of the house, and water had shot out of both fittings all over the walls, sink, cabinets, floor. Saying I was pissed was an understatement.
So, I mop up everything the best I can. Then I take the laundry hookup apart, and tape the fittings. Go through the whole scenario again, still leaks like a sieve. This time I take it apart and dope it and that took care of it. I'm gonna go punch the idiot in the head that specifically told me
NOT to tape or dope the fitting. Now, it's still leaking a little on the cold side, not even a drip overnight though, because the fitting being PEX, is plastic, and the laundry hookup is brass, it cut away the threads. Now I gotta go get another fitting.
I discovered, after all was said and done, that the trick to these PEX fittings is the little plunger release mechanism has to be pulled all the way out while you are pushing the PEX Tubing in, and it's not easy. The directions that come with the fittings don't tell you that, but after 6 hours of screwing with it, it came back to me that I ran in to this before at my other house and didn't have a leak in 8 years once I figured out how the fitting went on.
These were re-usable ones. They have an end on them that screws on and off for easy removal. It's not the crimp on kind. I've never had any luck at all with crimp on anything.
I looked up that stuff PEX...and most of the plumbers around here are using it now on all new houses. That's about all I know about it.
The guy where I bought these fittings and tubing told me copper will be phased out in 5 ~ 10 years because it's so expensive. The thing is, it takes so much more tubing because of how they run PEX, it's the same price. They run each line to a manifold ... each tube is an individual feed for every faucet and shower head, hot and cold. In theory, if they plan it right, it's great because you only have two points where failure can occur, at the faucet, and at the manifold.
I detest having to install plumbing.
Plus ... the people who did the plumbing originally, never glued the drain line inside the wall and it leaked over the years. Now I have to fix that. I got the wall all ripped out, water, broken sheetrock, fittings, tape, pipe dope, sopping wet tools, all over the laundry room. It's a disaster area in there. LOL! I'm laughing now, but last night I was insane with fury. LOL!