Sharkbite fittings

[Eric Johnson]

They have them at Home Depot and other places that sell plumbing supplies. Basically, they're o-ring plumbing fittings that regular OD plastic pipe, pex and copper tubing slips into and is then held with a water-tight seal.

They cost like hell, so I figured the only good use for them would be in mating pex to standard copper. However, I was doing some domestic water system plumbing on the 4th of July and got into one of those situations where you can't solder the last joint because you can't stop the water from dripping into the fitting. After cutting and re-soldering a lousy 1/2-inch coupling about three times, I finally put a bucket under the leak and gave up for the night.

At some point, it occurred to me to give one of them new-fangled Sharkbite thingies a try. Sure, a half-inch coupling was $5, but it worked like a charm. Since they can be disassembled with a special tool, it's like having a union in the water line without having to do any soldering.

So even though I think they're priced way too high (what plumbing parts aren't these days?), I'm recommending 'em.

 

[Robbie]

Eric, I'm not a plumber so what is PEX ?

OD - outside diameter ? Correct ?

Would this work on any pipe you want to join together for a seal ?


Robbie

 

[TMonter]

PEX is a type of tubing made of I believe a urethane composite.

 

[Eric Johnson]

PEX is plastic hydronic heating system piping. It's also starting to be used in domestic water applications. It's a lot cheaper than copper these days and is flexible, so it can be run around corners, etc. without the need for fittings. It typically connects to conventional piping (steel, copper and pvc) with special fittings, which can be expensive. The better heating system stuff has aluminum tubing sandwiched between two layers of plastic.

OD means outside diameter, as you correctly surmised. The Sharkbites even have fitting with threaded connections on one end, for mating up threaded pipe and fittings with tubing.

 

[myzamboni]

Eric,

I mentioned this in another post as well. Take some white sandwich bread, remove the crust, shove the bread into the side that the drip is coming from to collect the drip, and solder the fitting. Take the aerator out of the closest faucet to this line and run the water. it will breakdown the break and it will come out the faucet and go down the drain.

 

[Eric Johnson]

I tried that, but it failed. Both sides of the coupling leaked. I think the bread on both sides created an air lock in the coupling, resulting in escaping pressure, which pushed out the solder. I think the bread thing works best when you're only plugging up one side--and there's a vent of some kind on the other. Live and learn.

Funny, because I've never actually failed to successfully solder a wet connection--eventually. But every time, I would have spent $5 to avoid all the grief.

 

[cbrodsky]

Meant to reply to this ages ago - great tip! These were awesome for installing my hot water recirculator - had to install two tees into 3/4" copper line. Off the tee, I used very short sections of PEX which let me maintain a much larger diameter than using typical facuet flex hoses, while still having just enough wiggle room to align up with the recirculator pump using very short runs of PEX. The larger diameter of course means much faster flowrate when recirculating on demand.

Totally worth the extra few dollars for all the hassle it saved me and I'd highly recommend them - have had them in for at least a couple months now and they look solid.

-Colin