In case anyone from the US reads this, BSPP and BSPT fittings are rare and incredibly frustrating here, as our NPT (National Pipe Taper) threads are different and the selection of BSP(P/T) fittings is extremely poor in comparison.
Also, I work with NPT fittings quite a lot:
> For what it’s worth, I tightly wrap the tape 10 times round the male thread and get an enraged mountain gorilla to tighten it up.
This is a WTF NO!!! for NPT and I’ll assume a WTF NO!!! for BSPT as well. You need about 1.5 wraps of PTFE tape to seal a fitting. Any more is wasteful and asking for leaks (or damage, if you’re using plastic fittings). It helps if you use the correct tape width for the fittings (1/4”, 1/2”, and 1” for me) and develop a wrapping method that keeps the tape under tension at all time and in such a direction that threading it into the fitting doesn’t unwrap the tape.
Also, in my experience, when someone inexperienced first learns what pipe tape is, they try to apply it to everything. 20 wraps around a tapered pipe? Wrap a Swagelok fitting? Try to make a butt joint or an adapter for two pieces of plastic tubing? I’ve seen it all.
"You need about 1.5 wraps of PTFE tape to seal a fitting. Any more is wasteful and asking for leaks"
I would have thought this obvious and it's essentially my experience (and I'm definitely not a plumber). However, I've found that more PTFE tape is needed on old or worn fittings or on ones that have damaged or badly cut threads—or when mating
same sized pipes/fittings but each with different threads (yes, that's a desperate brute-force move in an emergency but I've had to force such matings on more than one occasion). In these circumstances, I'll use two or three turns or more often by trial and error—and this changes somewhat depending on whether I'm using thinner white PTFE tape or the thicker pink one.
Of course—not being plumber—it often happens that when I urgently need PTFE tape I cannot find it (it having been filed in some obscure place that I've forgotten about—even though I keep a reasonable stock of it), it's then I fall back to the good old combination of Hessian/burlap jute-type rope (of which there is always some lying around in my workshop) and linseed oil based paint. It's messy and much less convenient combination than PTFE tape but it still works wonderfully well. Moreover, it's more tolerant of the amount applied as the linseed oil actually binds to the pipe surface as opposed to the more 'mechanical' bond of the PTFE.
>Of course—not being plumber—it often happens that when I urgently need PTFE tape I cannot find it
Ahh, young padawan, the way of the elder is to buy a roll every time you have a project to do until you have achieved saturation...where there is a lightly used roll of teflon tape in every drawer and on every surface of your workshop and garage.
Ha! I'm no longer a Padawan so, like you, I'm well acquainted with the practice of spreading things around to the point of saturation.
It's not only PTFE tape that I spread around in copious quantities, other notables on the list are screwdrivers (of various sizes and types), superglue tubes (they go off with age anyway), propelling pencil leads, keys, USB and computer cables, USB pen drives, computer mice, adhesive tape, remote controls and any number of useful things.
The trouble is these supposedly inanimate objects come to life in the middle of the night and conspire not to be available when I most need them. Then the moment I've made do by jerry-built means they suddenly reappear! ;-)
When I was a kid, my mom's theory on pencil purchasing was that if she bought enough, the house would be so saturated that you could shake a curtain and a pencil would fall out.
Almost every night I pick up 3-5 pencils around the main living area at our house. Somehow there are always dozens of pencils around, but finding one with a working eraser on the end is as rare as finding a unicorn.
I just bought 24x 6” stainless steel rulers because every time I’d reach for one it’d be across the room at a different desk. Now I can capture a dozen at a time in their remote location for rehoming. Problem solved.
Also on my list of buy too many so I’m never left without: sharpies, microfiber cloths, jumper cables, rice (carbs), frozen sliced sourdough (fancy carbs), pocketable protein/energy bars.
Mine are mainly metric or dual Imperial/metric too. I usually convert to Imperial because most readers are in the US.
If you were to read some of my old HN comments you'll realize defending the metric system in a US environment is pretty much a waste of time.
I recall one debate where some US commentators didn't have a clue about what a comfortable room temperature in Celsius would be. 68F=20C was meaningless to them even though 20C is a standard calibration temperature in lab and scientific work.
I was primarily making a joke. But it is indeed a big pet peeve of mine.
I do find it annoying that one country in the world likes to use it's own unit. And that of course they are not as nice to use as the units optimized for science. It is annoying for international communication.
But my real issue is that Americans seemingly lie to themselves by pretending everything can be rounded off to the nearest approximation of US customary units without consequences. And so anything you buy in the USA; unless maybe when manufactured with US customary units; is not the advertised size. Worse yet, this habit of rounding off is also applied to US customary units in many case. Because nothing is ever the advertised dimensions, or the tolerances are just laughably large. Nothing ever fits. That is what I am fighting.
Ask for a 48" long piece of lumber in the USA, you get something +- 1/4" at best (+- 6.35mm). Go to my home country asking for 1.2m will get you something +- 0.5mm. It's cultural.
That's only the way of the middle-aged. If you do it with just PTFE tape you'll be fine, but if you do it with all similar sundries, then you'll be oversaturated and once again won't be able to find anything without pawing through piles.
Right, see my reply to jcims but that's not all of matter. One could suppose I'm going senile and perhaps that's true but the fact is that I've been losing stuff like this since before I was a teenager.
I've figured out the problem: my mind is thinking about all sorts of seemingly important stuff all the time but which in fact is mostly garbage, so my subconscious mind handles what my conscious mind consideres as procedural or unimportant. As my conscious and subconscious minds aren't on speaking terms sufficient for my liking I often end up with the problem of lost stuff.
If I consciously tell myself where I've put something then I very rarely forget where it is. The trouble is I don't remind myself to make note often enough.
My own working model is one of complexity building up over time. You can handle it fine as long as you don't have many fields of endeavor, you have plenty of time to periodically focus on them, keep the stuff organized, can fully finish a project and button it up, etc. But then things happen where you're forced to clear out your mental cache, or even screw up your organization/storage system for whatever, and it comes crashing down. Then all the complexity you were managing gets in your way, and the problem snowballs unless you regain some bandwidth and take steps to mitigate the decay.
Right, that makes sense. And my explanation is more complex than I could detail in my comment.
I know I have too many diverse interests—fields of endeavor to quote you—and the older I get the more of them I accumulate. On the one hand having many interests is very useful because it allows me to see and understand common ideas or threads across quite disparate and diverse subjects that otherwise would not have been obvious but the matter of administration becomes a significant problem. Often I've little time to deal with prosaic matters so the mundane is often left to itself (disorder accumulates).
That said, I'm instinctively an orderly and tidy person, as I like to say 'there's a place for everything and everything in its place'. I hate mess and disorder but that doesn't mean that I don't experience it—I do so often for reasons that you mention. However, when entropy/disorder around me reaches a certain 'sensibility' threshold I'm triggered to have an almighty cleanup much to the chagrin of others around who have a more relaxed view of disorder.
Nevertheless, I'm not obsessive about it, sometimes I amaze myself at the level of disorder I'll tolerate. (Reordering things is boring and distracts me from my interests despite the fact that I'm competent and thorough about it. Essentially, the more preoccupied I am with something the higher my toleration for mess and disorder becomes).
No, I can concentrate on jobs for very long periods, if anything it's the opposite problem. (Although, if you think about it the collateral effects are very similar.)
ADD/ADHD isn’t always that you can’t ignore distractions.
It’s sometimes that you can’t stop focusing on something, even if you want to, or need to for your own health (like drinking water, or getting up and walking around tk stretch).
Perhaps if I'd used the proper name what I said may have been clearer. The correct name is hemp rope or plumber's rope but I don't often have that around (not being a plumber) so I use the next best thing available Hessian fabric or its rope equivalent).
You wrap the hemp fibers around the threads that have been brushed with linseed oil paint then apply a little more paint to the hemp and then mate the couplings together. This sealing technique has been around at least for several hundred years if not longer.
You don't need oil, just rope works as well. Every DIY store (at least over here) has loose manila fibre for that purpose. Wrap into the thread, screw it together, done. The not-so-nice problem: It might leak at first. The nice feature: The fibres will soak up water (thats why oil is actually counterproductive), swell up and make a tight fit after half an hour or so. You can even readjust the angle (other than with PTFE tape), it'll just drip for another half hour.
Right, there are multiple variations but they generally work in skilled hands although I learned from plumbers who always used oil (although using oil was always an imperative with gas pipes). Using oil usually negates the initial leaking whilst waiting for the hemp to dampen and swell.
Edit: I agree that using oil is counterproductive with water pipes—initially at least. I was taught by both plumbers and my father (who wasn't a plumber but a mechanical engineer who worked on power station boilers) that using oil is better in the long run as it prevents the hemp from rotting and thus premature failure of the seal. Moreover, using one oil-based method means that
a plumber cannot get confused and leave oil off gas connections where it's essential.
(I'd add that when referring to oil I'm specifically referring to linseed oil (even though I've seen some plumbers inappropriately use engine oil) because it slowly polymerizes and hardens even in the absence of air. This adds to the seal's effectiveness and further protects the hemp.)
No, the tape absolutely contributes to the seal. Sure, the lubrication lets you thread more tightly without binding, but that's not to say the tape isn't contributing to the seal. If it didn't, you would still have a spiral leakage path. PTFE tape is soft enough that it deforms and prevents the spiral leakage path which can occur with any tapered threaded joint.
I've actually used PTFE tape in super high pressure situations (>1000 psi) with straight (un-tapered) joints (you aren't typically supposed to, but this was for an experiment), and it indeed sealed.
> The tape also works as a deformable filler and thread lubricant, helping to seal the joint without hardening or making it more difficult to tighten
The tape is so incredibly soft, it isn’t doing much on that front.
You also don’t actually have a spiral leakage pattern with NPT if tightened appropriately- the fitting it self deforms to seal it.
You need the tape or some other dope so the metal doesn’t gall when you do it.
If you aren’t tightening it that tight, then yeah you’ll need rope or whatever.
If you pull apart the fitting afterwards, it’ll be really clear you only end up with a tiny, nearly molecule thin layer of the PTFE at the inside of the fitting, if anything.
> You also don’t actually have a spiral leakage pattern with NPT if tightened appropriately- the fitting it self deforms to seal it.
This contradicts every source I've read about NPT threads, e.g.
"NPT pipe thread design allows slight clearance between the thread crests and mating roots. This clearance creates a spiral leak path along the male thread crests. The spiral leak path is why NPT connections require a thread sealant to be leakproof."
"NPT, or National Pipe Thread (Taper) is an American standard for pipe connection dating back to the middle of the 1800s [...] they require a thread sealant, such as PTFE tape, to fill the spiral leak path inherent to the fitting;"
“They seal due to the "out of roundness principle" which means that the male stretches the female fitting until there is so much force that the connection can hold pressure. One of the challenges with this design is that if you connect stainless steel to stainless steel then over-tightening or poor lubrication can cause gauling and damage to the threads. Thread sealant is needed to seal but only 2 turns of thread sealant is required. ”
“ NPT connections rely on thread deformation- a metal to metal sealing design where the threads of the connectors themselves form together. This design is ideal for single assembly applications and not recommended where connections will be assembled and disassembled frequently due to wear on the threads from deformation.”
I think you’re running across SEO spam. The bane of the internet. However, it is really commonly misunderstood, and I’ve heard all sorts of folks repeat it.
The thread sealant is to lubricate, and can help slightly in low pressure scenarios (like typical gas which is about 1/2PSI or 10-12 WC inches), but it’s to allow the fitting to work, not the primary sealing mechanism.
It’s not hard to do some back of the envelope calculations either and see that has to be true in many situations because the yield strength of PTFE tape or thread sealant (even when cured) is so low. It can’t hold on 100 PSI if it was what was doing the sealing.
Brass, Iron, Stainless? Piece of cake.
That said, there are thread sealants that do indeed provide high strength gas tight seals, loctite makes one for sure.
But it shouldn’t be necessary and isn’t generally in the plumbing aisle.
You can test out the lubrication effect yourself. It’s really obvious in brass, black iron, galvanized, and stainless fittings.
The standard ‘torque guidance’ for NPT fittings, is tighten to hand-tight, then do 2-3 turns.
Try it first without anything (with fittings you won’t mind losing), and the galling and friction is terrible. Often it’s impossible to do 2-3 turns, and hence it will leak. All the force is taken up with the friction on the threads. It may be impossible to undo due to the galling/cold welding.
Lubricating Oil on the threads? No issues, and you can tighten with no leaks unless the fitting is damaged or messed up.
Use tape or pipe dope? Usually even better than the lubricating oil, and minor damage won’t cause nuisance leaks which may require too much force otherwise.
Thin brass fittings and stainless steel are especially bad without some kind of lubricant. The brass even makes a shrieking sound, and is susceptible to cracking.
Such a great book. I’m a mechanical/aerospace engineer and it’s astounding how many in my field don’t understand fasteners and tend to oversize them. It’s seen as conservative but it can actually backfire.
As someone who is NOT a pipe fitter but lived with one for many years.. It was odd reading this and I'm glad someone like you responded to correct things.
> For what it’s worth, I tightly wrap the tape 10 times round the male thread and get an enraged mountain gorilla to tighten it up.
Again, not a pipe fitter but this just screams "WRONG". If someone needs to use that much force to tighten it up, one can only assume that the pipe is now so full of tape it simply doesn't fit?
My roommate had a "unlimited BTU" gas fitter license (Canada Class "A") and this for a living and preferred "pipe dope"
"Pipe dope is generally stronger seal than Teflon tape, which is why plumbers and other professionals use it rather than tape for seals that are permanent."
"My roommate had a "unlimited BTU" gas fitter license (Canada Class "A") and this for a living and preferred "pipe dope""
I do this kind of thing a lot as we own and maintain our own water plant. My preferred sealant is the yellow PTFE tape that is used for natural gas.
It is quite a bit thicker than the white tape, it sticks to threads better and it is easier to work with, in terms of manual dexterity.
I never use the white tape for anything.
I don't like pipe dope at all and I only use it for large fittings that are going to be buried or inaccessible.
ALSO, helpful hint: If you are mixing plastic pipe (like schedule 40/80) and metal pipe, always have metal female couplings and plastic male couplings. A metal male going into a plastic female is one tighten away from cracking the plastic.
> ALSO, helpful hint: If you are mixing plastic pipe (like schedule 40/80) and metal pipe, always have metal female couplings and plastic male couplings. A metal male going into a plastic female is one tighten away from cracking the plastic.
Or buy transition fittings or "special reinforced" fittings. Or, if you trust them, use push-to-connect fittings -- SharkBite, John Guest, ProLock, etc. (ProLock appears to be a John Guest product that is also sold by SharkBite.)
I've seen plenty of female plastic threaded fittings break even when connected to male plastic threaded fittings. They're just not that strong under circumferential tension.
The color isn’t necessarily related to the tape density. I always use Merco Threadmaster M66 (I think this, or the M77, is the McMaster default for high-density tape), which comes in all colors. I’ve had cheap tape come prepackaged with products that’s almost transparent and not with bothering with.
I also find it really helps to use the right tape width for the fitting you’re working with. I work mostly on small laboratory/pilot scale stuff (that needs to come apart in a few years, so no dope). I rarely use a fitting larger than 1/2”, but when I do, it’s a pain to use 1/2” tape. 1” (or 1.5”) will make a much neater and more consistent job. Similarly, I prefer 1/4” tape for 1/8” and smaller fittings.
>ALSO, helpful hint: If you are mixing plastic pipe (like schedule 40/80) and metal pipe, always have metal female couplings and plastic male couplings. A metal male going into a plastic female is one tighten away from cracking the plastic.
At some point it becomes easier to just think about what you're doing avoid being ham fisted moron than it is to seek out parts and design things to be accommodating to that kind of behavior.
I've seen people suggest that white tape should only be 1.5-2 but yellow should be 5 or more, do you have thoughts on that? Is there a difference in usage or is it the same overuse pattern on both?
I don't think you can use too much tape. Suggestions that you can break fittings with too much tape are almost certainly incorrect - with either plastic or metal.
I usually do 5-ish wraps with the thick yellow tape - and that is true with schedule 40 PVC, plain old galvy, or with small stainless fittings.
I am wasting tape, and I know it, and I have no problem with that - and neither do the fittings.
You can definitely break a plastic fitting with too much tape. The tape and the plastic are deformable, and I’ve had taped PVC fittings effectively extruded by repeated installation with fresh tape (every time you install it, you need a little bit more). This effect will be amplified if you’re fitting is made out of a material more prone to creep like PVDF, PP, or Nylon. Granted, this isn’t a typical (or appropriate) use case, but it was a necessary kludge for a project I had.
You can get leaks with too much tape if it prevents you from reasonably getting the threads to seal. When this happens, you get a slow leak between the layers of the tape. I’ve seen water slowly bead out of fittings at 1000 psi due to this.
Also, too much tape can lead to contamination (the tape sticks to every piece of dust, lint, and oil in your workspace) and can make it easy to cross thread fittings (especially small plastic ones).
>"Pipe dope is generally stronger seal than Teflon tape, which is why plumbers and other professionals use it rather than tape for seals that are permanent."
They use it because it's faster. As long as it's good enough any performance difference is secondary.
Except in the next sentence he says that he doesn't really use a gorilla (and that's the bit that's obviously a joke). But he doesn't say he doesn't use 10 wraps.
What do you think of the advice that it is acceptable to use a tapered male thread in a straight female one? My guess is that if you do that, you have at best one turn of the thread helix holding them together and providing a seal (and perhaps you would be trusting in nothing more than the tape jammed between the threads if you used ten turns of it!)
I don’t think it’s acceptable. Maybe works in pinch to get through a weekend but I would always replace it with a proper fitting. Plus if you damage the female threads or o-ring seat, you’ve made a much worse problem for yourself.
Tapered pipe threads are actually
much larger than you’d expect given the nominal diameter. 1/4 inch tapered pipe threads have a maximum outer diameter of more than 1/2 inch and 18 threads per inch. They will sort of work with a 1/4 inch straight thread but not by fully screwing in.
But only if you put the tape over the edge. I usually leave the first 2 threads uncovered, why would it fall into the stream if you don’t cover the tip of the thread with it?
The most installed/removed NPT thread will leak the most thus have the most tape added and the scraping of installation/removal will guarantee teflon contamination of the system eventually.
You are also correct in that something installed one time for the lifetime of the system, especially with some care and attention to cleanliness, is almost certainly OK.
There’s no problem applying it to a threaded connection in PVC. Unless you mean that you’ve figured out a way to apply to a fitting that’s meant to be glued? In that case I commend your abundant creativity.
My experience is that even one wrap of PTFE tape on threaded PVC causes it to loosen and then leak, and it's recommended by youtube/google to not use it. (Some say sealant is ok).
The real pro-tip is not to use tape at all. Instead use pipe dope or joint compound, it's cheap, easy, and better in every possible way. If you only have two do one or two very low importance joints, like a showerhead then tape is fine. But for anything serious use the joint compound. If you are doing a lot of work it's absolutely a game changer.
I’m pretty sure the author was exaggerating, because no sane person would use an enraged gorilla to tighten fittings. Gorillas are simply far too dangerous to be trusted with important plumbing work.
Thanks for mentioning this. This is so easy and fast to work with and you usually end up with sealed joints (Sorry, I'm an amateurish DIYer, first tries were failing). No additional grease needed to reduce friction, withstands high temps, for water and gas. What's not to love? Price maybe.
In Germany using hemp fibers instead of the PTFE tape is still really common (together with a sealing paste calle Neo-Fermit). The disadvantage of the tape is that you can't turn the fitting backwards even a little bit when tightening it, or you get leaks. With hemp that does not matter so much as it swells up with water.
I particularly hate the confusion that BSP and NPT cause. They're almost interchangeable (differing, iirc, probably on the angle of flank) and will get about three turns in and then leak or fail under pressure. In my world, this has led to graduate students spraying liquid nitrogen around. It's clearly the case that the two probably were supposed to be identical but diverted due to manufacturing differences in the distant past.
The standard advice I've been given when it comes to either vacuum or cryo fittings is "cut anything American off it as soon as it arrives and put DIN standard or KF kit on as soon as possible". Standards are a pain and that xkcd about there being too many of them is very, very true.
Your comment reeks to high heaven of textbook engineer. The practices you advise do not survive in a world of bottom dollar commodity pipe fittings.
Everyone with dirty fingernails knows that 3-4 wraps is a pretty good rule of thumb for fittings that are meant to go together and you need more when you're mix and matching BSP and NPT threads because you have a larger leak path to take up.
Nobody bothers stocking multiple widths of tape. That only makes sense in a production environment where you're only ever working with one size and can build to it.
In a pinch you can "augment" things like compression fittings with tape on the OD of the ferrule.
> You need about 1.5 wraps of PTFE tape to seal a fitting.
Not a pipe fitter, but I've done a lot of plumbing on a huge variety of systems (sinks, drains, air lines, HPLCs and other chemistry equipment, bioreactors, RO systems, potato cannons). I have found through experience that the thick PTFE tape (usually grey or yellow) is almost always superior to the thin tape. I use 2-3 wraps of that and that seems to be ideal.
Thick tape is also a lot easier to remove than the thin PTFE if you have to reinstall (you aren't supposed to re-use tape if you unscrew it).
If you want a really good seal you wrap the tape 1-2 overlaps at the start of the thread and progressively make it thicker and thicker so you have more overlaps (10x) at the base. I guess it depends on the fittings but some run out of tapper and you can't tighten it anymore without the hexagonal nut hitting the adjacent fitting. This works well as you're building your own tapper which is sort of acting as an o-ring.
Generally BSP male fittings are always tapped which is why they don't mention it.
Do you have a reference for this? Everything I've read is the purpose of the tape is to reduce friction (hence PTFE), not to actually seal. In other words, the seal comes from the fittings connecting tightly, made possible by 2-3 wraps of PTFE low friction tape.
A reference? This is plumbing not academia. The parts I get might be slightly different than the spec so you have to make up for it with the right amount of tape in situ. If you tighten the threads as much as possible and there is still a gap then you have to seal it somehow. Soft plastics will deform enough to seal without any tape at all but harder materials need something between to fill in the gaps.
Parallel threads need an alternative sealing method, or they’ll leak. If low pressure, dope or tape might be enough, but it’s using the fitting wrong.
Usually there is a flare, mating surface, or o-ring type setup that should be used instead. Examples would be welding tank connections, or scuba tanks that are at thousands of PSI.
For NPT, if the fitting is properly tightened, the fitting deforms and the threads mash together. They won’t leak even at hundred of PSI.
I use a minimum of 4 wraps and usually 5 or 6 wraps on black pipe in the 3/4”-2” range. 2 wraps might be enough for nice clean plastic or brass threads in the 1/2” or less range, but larger steel fittings need more PTFE tape.
Indeed. If your threads are new you're not supposed to use any teflon tape, you use pipe dope. Teflon tape is for worn threads when you are out of pipe dope.
This article doesn't touch much about why plumbing is hard. I'm from Poland so I'm not only IT but also a plumber ;)
Plumbing is hard because it is not forgiving. It's as binary as IT except you can learn the outcome with some delay, once you learnt about a damage caused by a leak. Either you do a pressure tests right or repair can be expensive. And bugfixing is always tricky.
Water also goes down whether you like it or not. Think about all possible leaks inside the shower cabin. Or what is even more impressive that under a pressure the water goes everywhere possible.
Plumbing is similar to electrical engineering, except it usually doesn't kill immidiately (though working with gas is tricky anyway) but requires similar strict mental model to do right.
And when you see a plumber it seems like this person is just a physical worker. So work status misconception must be leveled with money...
I had a funny experience a week ago. One night working on a hobby web project it took me three or four hours to debug something, I finally got to bed around midnight thinking "boy, programming is hard".
The next day at work we had to find a broken heat wire in a tiled bathroom floor, running 1000 volts through the wires to try to fuse the broken wire, then heating the floor up and searching with heat-sensitive paper overlays for the likely broken spot, then breaking the tile with a hammer and digging the wire out of the mortar bed. After we found it I thought, "I'd rather hunt software bugs".
I once had to jackhammer a 4 foot wide, 26 foot long, 4 foot deep trench in my basement to replace the sanitary sewer in my house. It was old terracotta pipe and had tree roots growing into it and eventually blocked the flow. It was doing that that helped me be so thankful to have an office job. I also had to lug all the rubble upstairs in 5 gallon buckets.
I didn't. It's not good practice to fill in the trench with rubble (rubble is the big chunks of concrete with re-bar still in it, not the dirt). I left the dirt down there, along with any smaller chunks of concrete, anything smaller than a golf ball or so. Good practice states that you should fill the trench directly around the pipe with gravel which i brought down fresh, compact that and then fill dirt on top of that, which I had left down there, and then finally with newly poured concrete and re-bar. Filling in the trench with the rubble would potentially damage the new pipe I just put in. It actually wasn't bad bringing in the new gravel and sacks of concrete because gravity does the work for you. We just opened one of the windows and put two 2x4 boards to make a ramp and slid the bags down that. Just had to carry it from the truck to the window.
Good question, I don't know. The technician on site didn't have one. I guessing the camera would be faster, but the result image about the same. The nice thing about the paper is you easily can check multiple spots at once, so it's faster to divide down to the problem area.
Very cool! The tech did have some device that could measure the distance to the fault when tied into wire upstream, but I'm not sure if it was a TDR, I think he was making more rule of thumb calculations based on the characteristics of the wire. I would say though that between his voltage box, amp box, and general test tools he had the coolest tech on the jobsite in general.
My complaint is that plumbers frequently do poor work for the money.
We had some come and install an instant water heater and they cut an ugly hole in the side of the house without much thought.
At one office I worked in they called Roto-Rooter (a non-union franchise that is likely to wreck your pipes and require a call to the union plumbers afterwards) who claimed that we'd flushed a condom down the drain (very hard to believe) and wrecked the pipes so we had to call the union plumber.
Another time the sink wasn't running so we called the union plumbers, they unscrewed the aerator from the faucet, saw some crud come out and the water run and left in triumph, sure of their ability to outthink a group of mere computer nerds.
Us computer nerds were sitting at the faucet immediately after that, running it and talking about it. The now aerator free faucet clogged up again within 2 minutes of the plumbers leaving.
> My complaint is that plumbers frequently do poor work for the money.
Considering the quality of many expensive website and software implementations I've been required to use throughout the years at various jobs, this problem is not unique to plumbers.
I've helped out with some plumbing work in an older house, and it's pretty fascinating to see the progression of technologies.
100 years ago, most drain pipes in the US were massive cast-iron pieces with no threads at all. They were mated together, then the joint was filled with a compound called oakum. To really hold it together, the plumber would pour molten lead on top of the oakum. Just taking that stuff apart is a lot of work. I can't imagine putting it together as well, especially for 40 hours a week.
I agree with the author's dismay about threaded fittings, but 100% disagree about PTFE tape versus thread sealant. PTFE tape is garbage. If you use thread sealer the way it's supposed to be used (put on a decent amount, then thread the pieces together with the "nudge and a grunt" technique instead of cranking down on it with a huge amount of force), it will seal perfectly almost every time, and any minor leaks can usually be fixed by tightening the joint slightly. If that's not enough, just take it apart and redo it. I've rarely had to try twice, and never three times.
Not sure about British threaded pipe, but NPT threaded pipe actually doesn't benefit from being tightened beyond a certain point because of the way the threads are designed. I redid the seals and some of the fittings[1] on all the antique hot water radiators in a house because no contractor within a day's travel would work on antique hydronic heating systems. Good quality thread sealant, no garbagey PTFE tape, no leaks, even in constant use.
That having been said, modern pipes and fittings make things dead simple. PVC (or ABS, but PVC is nicer IMO) for drains, push-to-connect fittings for water lines (I like PEX, but I know opinions vary). No lead, no torches. Easy to cut with hand tools. Lightweight. Anyone who's interested can probably do at least basic work with modern pipes.
In fact some plumbers still do lead work. Lead sheet roof flashings are common in the UK. Roofers can beat it into certain shapes, but if you need something more complex you would get a plumber to weld it for you.
I learnt to lead-weld (with oxy acetylene) in the past and found it very satisfying...
It appears you are wrong, and the person you are replying to was correct. Perhaps when baldly contradicting someone, you could make some effort to back up your opinion.
plumb
plumb
{{11}}plumb (adj.) "perpendicular, vertical," mid-15c., from PLUMB (Cf. plumb) (n.). The notion of "exact measurement" led to extended sense of "completely, downright" (1748), sometimes spelled plump or plunk.
{{12}}plumb (n.) c.1300, "lead hung on a string to show the vertical line," from O.Fr. plombe, plomme "sounding lead," from L.L. plumba, originally plural of L. plumbum "lead," the metal, of unknown origin, related to Gk. molybdos "lead"
Neither have anything to do with pouring molten lead. Only measuring the vertical.
The purpose of finding the vertical is to determine the horizontal in installing sloped pipe.
> late 14c. (from c. 1100 as a surname), "a worker in any sort of lead" (roofs, gutters, pipes), from Old French plomier "lead-smelter" (Modern French plombier) and directly from Latin plumbarius "worker in lead," noun use of adjective meaning "pertaining to lead," from plumbum "lead" (see plumb (n.)). The meaning focused 19c. on "workman who installs pipes and fittings" as lead pipes for conveying water and gas became the principal concern of the trade.
> The chorobates is a rod about •twenty feet in length, having two legs at its extremities of equal length and dimensions, and fastened to the ends of the rod at right angles with it; between the rod and the legs are cross pieces fastened with tenons, whereon vertical lines are correctly marked, through which correspondent plumb lines hang down from the rod. When the rod is set, these will coincide with the lines marked, and shew that the instrument stands level.
The Latin for "plumb lines" is seen in "quae habent lineas ad perpendiculum recte descriptas pendentiaque ex regula perpendicula in singulis partibus" - Vitruvius does not use a variation of "plumb" to describe those verticals.
That usage, from the quoted etymology, wasn't created for another 1,000+ years.
I skimmed what appear to be reliable references, and they all mention the Latin -> French -> English etymology for plumber, and they do not reference "plumb" in the sense you are using.
I suspect that plunging in and making a poor argument doesn't reflect well upon you. I am happy to be corrected, if you can provide a rock-solid reference: the English language is a wonderful midden.
Just to be clear, I'm not trying to discount the skill and knowledge of professional plumbers. It's an incredibly complex field (especially since they need to be familiar with decades of different pipe technology), and usually involves working in filthy parts of the house no one else wants to go into. They deserve every penny.
Normally the market is supposed to correct these things but sadly we've created a culture that looks down on physical labour. Now there is a small group that can charge whatever they want.
They can't charge that much or people will do their own plumbing. It's fussy, but most routine things aren't too hard to do one step at a time. Sometimes you get a new faucet with an internal leak though, experience might have helped diagnose that without taking everything apart 20 times. Sometimes there's a big job like replacing a lateral, which is yeah, time to hire a pro.
In New Zealand, water work is regulated so only a licensed plumber can do it. The prime minister was once investigated by the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board for installing her own toilet. Her punishment was having to apologize :P
Teflon tape is a lubricant, it's not meant to seal the joints. So for example if you're screwing a shower head "hockey stick" pipe into a drop ear elbow in the wall, and it stops at a weird angle instead of pointing down -- use PTFE tape on the threads to make them slide against the ones in the fitting more easily, it'll turn further.
To seal a NPT-threaded joint, use pipe dope (it's both a lubricant and a sealant).
Thinking about a system a half-step up from hose clamps holding 100psi of pressure, which if it pulls apart will rapidly release hundreds of gallons of water does not inspire confidence. And since the house is already plumbed with copper and I know how to sweat joints, I might as well continue that.
I'm about to use PEX for the first time on my hydronic heating system, which is only ~20psi and limited volume (autofill valves are an anti-pattern). Maybe I'll fall in love, who knows.
One of the things I like about it is that because it's flexible, if you route it carefully you can avoid using connectors in a lot of areas that rigid pipe would require a joint. The way I saw it used, the only joints were in areas like cleanout access and crawlspaces, so even if a joint went bad, it wouldn't require opening up a wall to fix. I'm not a pro, so maybe rigid pipe is supposed to only have joints in accessible areas too, but that certainly wasn't the case with the century-old plumbing I saw.
It's still relatively new compared to other pipe material, so there may be some other surprises that crop up with long term use, but I'm really impressed with its ease of installation.
There is few type of PEX fitting systems. I agree the hose clamp style doesn't inspire confidence at all.
I have replaced almost all piping in my house. I used PEX-B with the fittings secured by copper rings that you crimp with the appropriate tool. It is so easy to use and confirm the joint with a gauge tool.
I had to solder copper where I couldn't replace it all. Every copper joint was it's own little project. While for PEX it's quick and easy.
After a thorough session of Internet Research, I chose to start with stainless cinch rings rather than the copper crimp rings? Because copper crimp rings are seemingly preferred by professionals only due to being slightly cheaper in quantity plus looking nicer? Also the consumer-priced power tool (Ryobi) for doing the crimp rings has mixed reviews, while their cinch ring tool seems universally loved (likely due to manufacturing tolerances needed for a good crimp die).
Either way, my lack of confidence applies to all PEX-B and PEX-A connections. They're all essentially a straight friction fit with some hose barbs. I got some PEX-AL-PEX fittings/tube too (the 1" P-A-P has 35% larger cross section than plain PEX, and PEX larger than 1" seems rare and expensive), and the threaded compression style gives more confidence.
I'm not disputing that PEX is a whole lot easier, even knowing how to do copper and just watching PEX videos. As I said, "maybe I'll fall in love". I'm just starting with piping where a leak won't be a major hassle (hydronic, and eventually compressed air), and foresee myself continuing to do copper for any modifications to potable water in the immediate future. If I had to redo the whole house, I'd get over my reservations quick!
PEX-AL-PEX is more expensive, but also convenient to work with as it stays in place like a gooseneck lamp. It is also an oxygen barrier, and as such useful for closed loop hydronic with prone to rust components (cast iron). I don't know if P-A-P can be rated for potable water though.
I purposefully avoided the stainless cinch rings. This feels like the cheapest solution to me. It has some moving pieces. I found examples of leak with stainless cinch rings online when I was choosing what technology to use. Not so much with the copper rings. The copper rings are just that. A thick copper ring that you press into shape with great force. The price of the $50 crimp tool is nothing compared to the cost and hassle of a leak down the line. Add a $30 ring cutter tool too. For when you mess up (you cannot remove the ring in place, you must cut the pipe).
I have also retrofitted the house with underfloor hydronic heating. 400m of PEX in an open loop system. Not a single leak after few years.
With the copper rings the PEX takes the shape of the fitting. Even if you manage to cut the ring. The PEX won't come off. You have to cut the pipe lengthwise to get it off. I am not sure the stainless clamps perform the same.
Why open loop for the radiant? Already had non-barrier PEX? Or using existing DHW as the heat source?
I'm installing an outdoor wood boiler, which is an open system. But it will have a heat exchanger to my closed hydronic system for house distribution.
P-A-P seems nicer to route the pipe, but there are fewer fitting shapes. I'm considering it for a few long runs, because anything over 1" nominal seems to become rare and jump in price, and the 1" P-A-P is 35% larger than 1" PEX-B. But maybe I should just suck it up and deal with 1.25 or 1.5 inch PEX-B. (Would you happen to know a good source? I keep coming up with Supplyhouse.com, but half the fittings are out of stock and they seem expensive).
I'll see how I like the cinch rings. Maybe I'll move towards the crimp rings down the line. I figured a powered tool would be a boon for doing a bunch, and as I said it seems like for a powered crimp ring thing I'd need a Milwaukee cordless for ~$600, whereas the cinch ring I can get away with a $100 Ryobi. I can justify the latter for personal use, but not the former.
pexuniverse and supplyhouse are the two places I have used for the material.
Open loop is easy to deal with. I can use the same water heater. It's the bay area in California, so the system works for 1/3 or the year. Rest of the time it's simply buffering the cold water supply to the water heater. So no water stagnating, not air vent needed, and it's always filled up by definition. Further more because it's at the street water pressure, the pump cannot cavitate, so it last longer and is quieter.
I only used manual tools to crimp the rings. Sure you need some force but your body will build muscles. And since PEX is flexible you don't use that many fittings anyways. It's really childs play.
Can you tell me more how you retrofitted your house with underfloor hydronic heating? How long did it take and what materials did you use. How many pipes per square meter? Also, did you reuse the flooring after or did you replace it completely?
I'm looking into adding underfloor heating myself.
The house is a stick framing atop a perimeter foundation, with few posts making a crawl space. You can almost sit down. It took a week to install loops of 1/2 (16mm) PEX between the joists supporting the floor. The pipes go through holes in the joist and blocking, and cross at the beginning of every bay to make up every loop. The PEX is held up by aluminum heat plates that are simply stapled. Theost annoying part of the job was to cut all protiding nails. The took few days prior the piping. There is something like 400m of pipes. Split into multiple circuits. Aligned at room boundaries and adjusted to have similar length for homogenous pressure drop. All of that is an open loop with the water heater. A pump, a thermostat and few check valves supply the manifold that distribute the hot water under the floor.
Awesome, thanks. The loop design looks simple, which is encouraging. It's true that the most annoying parts are usually the secondary tasks that can't be ignored either way.
The joists sure help. In my case the floor is either tiles or wood panels laying on top of poured concrete.
Be sure to read up on oxygen barrier vs permeable Pex. (You probably already have, but if not, you almost certainly want barrier Pex in a closed-loop system.)
My city water pressure was around there, with few ill effects. I've since installed a pressure regular to drop it to around 60psi. But I liked it better before, especially on the silcocks.
It's not really the pressure that has me worried, but rather the potential flow rate. I've dealt with a flooded basement before, and I'd rather not do it again.
I don't see many people complaining that PEX fails by completely pulling apart, but it's hard for my intuition to accept that.
There’s definitely a “right” way and a “wrong” way to do it.
Having each fixture connection being a “home run” without any fittings between source and destination really reduces a lot of vulnerabilities. Having a central manifold that lets you easily turn off any tap is nice too.
A condo building I lived in did something wrong (I suspect) either a bad batch of PEX, or more likely, a batch that sat in the sun for a while, leading to multiple failures of hot water return lines in few years that were a mystery to pin down.
Home run plumbing also means a lot of pipes in the walls, so you end up with 20x more pipes in the walls and ceiling than is actually necessary, and 20+ valves, which are often made of plastic instead of brass because otherwise costs would balloon. In any case, the fittings aren't the weak point, the pipe is; a properly crimped joint or expansion joint will never leak. And often it's impossible to have no fittings on a run of pipe anyway.
In my opinion, traditional trunk and branch plumbing is far more flexible and just as reliable. It also allows for a hot water recirculation loop, which is impossible with home-run plumbing.
Also, I should mention that I've used PTFE tape without any issues for air tool connections. It's just for plumbing - where even a slow, tiny leak can cause massive damage - where I think it's a terrible choice.
It's perfectly usable but you need to wrap a lot of it. If you wrap so long that you can barely make out a thread underneeth you can have a good seal lasting decades even if you don't screw the thread in completely.
On steel pipes and fittings obviously. Plastic ones might crack.
Also hemp fiber requires bit more practice and leverage but it's really good.
For sure. Those oakum + lead joints were problem-free a century after they were installed. How many of us can expect that from the things we do at work?
The only reason some of that pipe needed to be replaced was that it was fused (by rust) to mid-20th-century galvanized pipe that had rusted completely shut.
Generally the lead joints described above were only used for waste plumbing where the max pressure is very very much lower than the water supply pressure
Those lead joints were leaching lead into the water. If it was a supply pipe, as opposed to a drain, then people were ingesting that lead. It needed to be replaced whether it was leaking or not.
The lead in those joints never touches liquid. It's a sealant on the back of the oakum, which is what does the actual water contacting.
Also, nearly all water supplies (municipal, at least) are pH adjusted to be slightly basic, which causes lead to form lead carbonates and oxides, which is (basically) insoluble in cold water. Still good policy to replace lead supply lines, but not a crisis unless you allow your water quality to fluctuate (ala Flint or a number of other US cities, sadly)
A big source of lead can be recently sweated copper lines (takes a while for the corrosion control to coat it), but lead solder isn’t supposed to be in potable use anymore. And old fixtures!
Yes I've found it's very frustrating looking for "genuinely zero lead" brass and bronze. Almost all scrap has lead in it to some degree, and even new metal often has a trace.
Neat, this dovetails with another interest of mine, pottery. NaF is "sodium feldspar" and Ca-Si compounds are "wollastonite" among others. Both useful as fluxes in metal casting, in addition to their pottery uses.
It was just the drain pipe system that was built that way (at least in the house I helped out with). All of the supply lines were galvanized steel, replaced with PEX.
I had a major plumbing problem some time ago (leak in the house’s main line) and paid a plumber way too much to dig a hole and fix it. I of course wasn’t about to pay him to fill the hole back up, and while it was open I took a good look. That’s when I discovered PEX. PEX is wonderful: easy to work with, inexpensive, simple to fix if you screw something up. I wish all plumbing was PEX.
I briefly installed an NPT flow meter (that was probably actually BSP) in the line. I can confirm that the PEX-to-NPT fittings leaked until I used a whole roll of PTFE tape and a mountain gorilla. Eventually the cheap flow meter started leaking from the casing itself so I ripped it out and replaced it with beautiful PEX.
Came here to also plug PEX. A friend used it for his remodel, did most of the work himself, and set everything up so all the lines come down to a sort of "switchboard" panel in his basement, so that as he did more remodeling work in the future he could disconnect individual loops trivially. It just makes so much sense and is so easy vs copper pipe.
Amusingly he told me one of the plumbers he did get a bid from said something like "well all PEX does is save you time and money" like it was a bad thing lol.
It’s also super easy and affordable to run extra lines that aren’t being used for future use. For instance, it might be you want to run a circulator across all your taps, but not today.
It breaks down pretty quickly when exposed to light, chlorine, and excessive heat. It's also very easy to damage. A kid being an idiot or rats and mice gnawing on everything like they do and you've got a heck of a leak that hopefully is caught quickly.
Seems like there's lots of situations where it's a good choice and lots of situations where it's not.
Can confirm - also started using PEX recently, and it is fantastic - wouldn't go back for anything! Straightforward, solid, more resistant to freezing (tho I still drain/blow out the outside lines in winter). I've even had zero problems with the PEX-copper fittings; I generally just attach straight onto a cut pipe rather than an NPT fitting, so that may account for my different experience.
I've run a few new lines in the house, and also new hose faucets outside. Looking at using it for both vacuum and compressed air lines in the shop.
There are two problems with PEX in the shop, one real one joke.
The joke one is PVC + UV = shrapnel, and frankly given enough time and vibration PVC doesn't need UV to shatter, so old timers hearing you're using plastic in the shop will freak out. (edited for those who don't get the joke: Pex will definitely split or crack under UV but AFAIK never shatters, so using PVC is a major OSHA violation but using unprotected Pex is mostly safe although maybe economically unwise)
The real problem is the melting point is unimpressive and you're like one lathe chip away from an air leak. Not catastrophic but annoying. Murphy's law is air leaks only happen when you don't have time to slap a new fitting on, or when your collection of fittings is empty/missing and the store closed five minutes ago.
Locally, we also have problems with rodents chewing threw unprotected pex. Probably because we rarely freeze, and unprotected really means completely unprotected.
There is a pex variant which consists of aluminium pipe with plastic layers on the inside and outside. This should combat low melting point of the plastic
I've not done any major replumbing yet but I've been watching Matt Risinger [1] on YouTube for a few months and have quickly become a PEX fanboi. He's a home builder based in Texas and uses PEX for basically every job. There are some videos on his channel comparing different types of PEX and PEX against other systems.
His channel is great but it gives a false sense of what can be accomplished on my budget most of the time. It's always far above what I can afford but If I can even replicate 10% of what he does I'll be better off than most.
That’s the one my house was plumbed with. I’ve already had to patch two random leaks. I don’t yet have the motivation to fix the whole house so I just keep PEX tools and parts handy in case it fails somewhere else.
We started with welded joints, then moved to threaded (and every variation in between of that). I kind of wonder if PEX will be deprecated some day by something even better. We are going to end up with yet another standard that PEX has to interface with. Feels like an xkcd... https://xkcd.com/927/
All this plumbing talk got me remembering the time I redid a bunch of the copper in a fixer-upper. Reading up on solder joints, I got into the underlying metallurgy, and discovered solder isn’t “glue”. You have to abrade it to remove the oxide, quickly cover the raw copper with flux, and then let the boiling flux draw the molten solder into the joint. It doesn’t take much, and you end up with a metal-metal-metal bond. Once I understood the point, the joints were a breeze. Later, I had a pro plumber in to deal with some iron pipe, noticed my copper work and was impressed. Very satisfying.
I'm really not confident about copper pipes. Metals in solder are very different electrochemically than copper. There might be other electrically connected metals in the installation. There might be some impurities grains in the copper.
I've seen videos of copper pipes developing pinhole leak from corrision.
The Teflon tape is only to be used as a friction modifier as NPT and other tapered threads seal on the threads. Reduced friction means that you can get enough load to deform the metal threads and create a seal. Be careful to not add tape to the first 2 threads as small pieces of Teflon tape can break off and get stuck into valves and things within appliances causing them to leak. There is nothing wrong with pipe dope and I find it to be superior though messy.
Annoyance for those in the states: Big box stores used to advertise fittings as NPT (National pipe thread). NPT being an ANSI spec. They seem to have switched to MIP and FIP for Male Iron Pipe and Female Iron Pipe. These are NPT as well but with a new name? Perhaps they are looking to avoid holding themselves to the spec?
Lead content in brass drinking water rated piping and fittings are being phazed out for obvious reasons. New low lead brass is stronger and does not deform as easily as the older leaded brass fittings. The result is that some fittings are now more difficult to tighten untill leak free.
Pex and crimped copper fittings are not without there own issues. Relying on an o-ring with a 30 year shelf life is problematic when the pipe is behind drywall.
Perhaps one day we will get laser welded copper fittings.
Another category is Shark Bite, a simple push-on tech that is almost homeowner proof. All you need for many jobs is a cutter, some sandpaper, and the fitting: no pro tools, no torch. There are tight joist spaces the new copper crimper won't fit and overhead soldering is fraught, which you can sharkbite in 2 minutes.
Back to O-rings, I do wonder about the lifetime of the seals in there though.
Depend on size and material of the o-ring. A o-ring is a flexible material that under pressure will bend in order to fit a space. Under high pressure the material might intrude out slowly, if you repeatably bend it it might snap, and as with many flexible materials it may go brittle and crack if exposed to changes in temperature or moisture.
In a previous life, I managed a team of instrumentation and tubing fitters at a new chemical plant that was being built. Some of the tubing for the process analyzers (chromatographs) had to be redone as they used PTFE tape on the fittings which was being detected by the GC.
The first issue is pipes are used for a lot more than pressurized drinking water, and for compressed gases there's various standards so you don't accidentally connect your acetylene tank to your argon regulator and vice versa. Depending on local building codes, you have to work really hard in the USA to cross connect your natgas to your water supply, etc. For a home handyman this seems laughable but for giant construction projects at industrial sites you will inevitably see insane stuff sooner or later where roughed in water lines get accidentally connected to compressed air and stuff like that. I personally saw a PVC convenience pipe roughed in for ethernet cable get connected to sewer vent.
The second issue, related to the above, is NPT relies on thread deformation so the pros use pipe dope and the amateurs use teflon tape that contaminates everything, so you technically "can" use NPT for diesel or hydraulic but usually building codes and/or OSHA prevent such nonsense. Also thread deformation means every time you reuse a NPT its looser and leakier. Very slow leaking threads are not an issue for compressed air, so black iron pipe is common for industrial compressed air because who cares if 0.01% leaks out, but for flammable contamination sensitive stuff its a big issue. If 0.01% of your compressed air leaks out above a food prep assembly line nobody cares but if 0.01% of your hydraulic fluid leaks out into the food, then its a big food safety mess. The point is that most of this technology is being used outside its original use case, most NPT threads are not holding back compressed air, but crazy people are trying to use that tech to push natgas around or diesel or whatever and due to "tradition" and "codes" we are stuck with it. So the argument that NPT is shit so nobody should use it is pointless because its "really intended for" compressed air and is great for that, super cheap, easy to use, reliable enough, etc, so pointing out that its not optimal for car brakes is both true and also not useful "in practice".
Another comedy about threads: You can buy pipe dope to professionally seal NPT threads for air, natgas, car brakes, and water, but those pipe dopes are not the same, and you can cause quite a bit of trouble if you use air dope on natgas for example.
There are a few pipe dopes that advertise a wide range of material comparability. I recently purchased some for a automotive racing fuel pump setup that was rated for gasoline, nat gas and water.
"When buying male fittings, it’s best to always get tapered ones so they fit in either."
I tried that with a shop compressed air system and got lot of leaks, hissing, and the compressor turning on frequently. And I never did get the system not to hiss somewhere, so I can sympathize and ditto this rant. Even when using matching fittings, with gobs of tape and/or dope, and enough force to destroy multiple fittings, it leaks. I'd pay a plumber well to teach me some of those mystic arts, if I could find one in my plumber-free rural area.
If you're talking about quick connects, they'll always leak a bit.
The threaded fittings however are a different story. Assuming you didn't use stainless steel on stainless steel fittings [0]:
* You can find the leaks by spraying soapy water on suspect connections and looking for bubbles (wash off and dry with clean water afterwards unless you want some serious corrosion). You can also buy a jar of noncorrosive propylene glycol based leak check fluid at your local hardware store for somewhere around $10, which is a strictly better option although it's a bit harder to clean off.
* Undo the connection and throw away every fitting you can replace (you generally should not reuse NPT threaded connections unless you know what you're doing). Clean all fittings until they look brand new and with no visible debris on/in the threads.
* Watch some videos [1] and remake the connection using the proper amount of tape and sealant and appropriate torque [2]. Only tighten the fitting. If you loosen it even a bit during the process, undo it completely. Clean both sides, reapply tape and dope, and try again. Let the sealant set ~24h and retest.
[0]: Stainless steel pipe connections are a special case because they tend to cold weld before they're fully tightened. There are ways to mitigate that but the short answer is don't use them if you don't already know how.
[2]: NPT connections really shouldn't be torqued (you instead use turns from hand-tight for properly cut threads) but if you're having trouble find a torque chart for your fitting material (copper, brass, steel, etc) and follow that.
I had to do some plumbing work a few years ago and quite enjoyed solving the puzzle and completing the work myself. It did remind me a lot of my day job in tech. No individual part of the job is all that difficult but planning and executing everything properly, and all the cryptic/arcane knowledge required, was very similar. And just like when one of my networks or systems is down the work had to be completed quickly to resolve the outage.
"Hey, let me walk you through our Donnelly nut spacing and crack system rim-riding grip configuration. Using a field of half-C sprats, and brass-fitted nickel slits, our bracketed caps and splay-flexed brace columns vent dampers to dampening hatch depths of one-half meter from the damper crown to the spurve plinths. How? Well, we bolster twelve husked nuts to each girdle-jerry. While flex tandems press a task apparatus of ten vertically composited patch-hamplers. Then, pin flam-fastened pan traps at both maiden-apexes of the jim-joist."
Of the three aspects of home maintenance that are most common¹: plumbing, electrical and carpentry, I feel most comfortable with plumbing. It seems nicely discrete in that you’re generally putting together existing components without having to do much if any measuring and cutting. That said, I’m moving into a new house where I’ve got a handful of carpentry projects that will definitely stretch my abilities in that arena.
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1. In my experience, I suppose, one could perhaps add concrete/masonry and may be something with dirt?
There are plenty of technical comments here, but I have to say I got a great laugh from this post. I have dealt with many of the absurdities state side, so I can relate to your experience. By the time I got to the words Windows XP Screensaver, I was laughing so hard I couldn't read anymore. After finishing, I bookmarked you. Looking forward to more. Thanks.
Cheap fittings from GENSYM sellers on Amazon/Ebay/Aliexpress will have crappy threads, which will cause you endless pain. I'm guessing this is what inspired the author's rant. I generally try to buy fittings from suppliers that have an incentive to do some quality control. If one thread in a joint isn't perfect you're probably fine, but when both are terribly out of spec, it will never seal.
I see the author used the word "spanner" so I assume they're British which is why they have to earnestly deal with BSP. For fellow Americans, don't get anything BSP/BSPP/BSPT unless you have to (eg hydraulics commonly use BSPP/G-thread, and the bonded rubber washer is not optional).
For pipe tape/dope, the important thing to know is their main purpose is to reduce friction so you can tighten a joint further, which deforms the threads more - packing the threads is a secondary effect. I generally do dope, then 2-3 wraps of tape (in the right direction, of course), then dope again. I generally use the thicker blue tape, but thinner white should be the same with a few more wraps. I learned this trick from an old timer at a hardware store, and it has definitely helped on some recalcitrant joints. I'd rather not find leaks after something is assembled, so I just take the time and do it on most every joint now. (For reference, I mostly deal with 1/4 - 1 inch NPT brass/stainless/copper threads).
Also, not every type of connection takes dope/tape! For example, while US showers generally have NPT-M coming out of the wall, the showerhead generally has a rubber washer that makes the seal, and thus does not need tape. Similarly with flare/compression fittings.
Also, plumbers get paid a lot because it's generally heavily regulated - water supply contamination is one of those things we've refined over centuries and now take for granted. The regulation means they get a middle class wage, which is prohibitively expensive for other individuals to pay owing to high taxes and other overhead. Imagine how much it would cost to hire yourself as a software engineer for half a day.
Conveniently, of course, the US and Canada use NPT instead of BSP, the worldwide standard. Even if an NPT fitting and a BSP fitting are the same size, one won't screw into the other, since the threads have different shapes and are at different angles.
This guy wrote a whole article outlining how bad and unusable the British pipe standards are and you’re surprised the two (ish) continents that don’t use them are actually pretty happy with their standard and don’t want the other?
NPT has some flaws and complexities but generally while it’s comprehensive conventions and practices mean that for specific types of plumbing you’ll need some specific standard fittings and once you get used to them that’s pretty much that. From gases to liquids. None of this “whoa someone decided to use a tapered one here” you don’t get to chose what fitting you’re feeling like that day, we have building codes and if it’s a pipe in a wall carrying water than there’s a convention (and likely building code) that tells you your pipe, fitting, and which way the threads should turn! (Generally in the broadest strokes: Explosive gases are reverse threaded. Everything else isn’t.)
Anyway we’ve been saying no to bad British ideas since 1776. Don’t blame us outside the Americas the rest of you (and ISO) fell for it.
Working in labs on fluid and vacuum lines (<1in diameter) this is the way.
If only it wouldn’t cost as much as the house in fittings + tube to hardpipe stainless fittings on our water supply lines.
I stayed in a hostel hotel in Munich, DE with hard piped bathroom water lines. I was impressed and think they must have been in service for 30-50 years.
They're paid so much because you need to pay twice for the bad ones. My house's previous plumber threaded a copper line directly into the stainless steel DHW tank. That wasn't a problem, until it was.
I’ve never encountered a DHW tank made of stainless steel with stainless steel fittings.
The error that will destroy your pipes is to use anything copper in the condensate plumbing of a condensing boiler. Use PVC, CPVC or PEX (or stainless steel) with plastic fittings (PVC, CPVC, “engineered polymer”, or John Guest ProLock or similar). The high CO2 concentrations in the condensate will rapidly corrode copper.
Thanks to all the good people on Hacker News for their input, from which I've learned a lot. I should stress that any following advice is not from a professional plumber and is purely from my own experience as an idiot making a low pressure beer handling system. It should not be read as the proper way to do anything, especially if you are working on pressurised systems and definitely totally 100% not with gas fittings. Get someone in to do that, you lunatic. Seriously. Don't mess with gas.
Exactly, I do the simple stuff myself and only call a plumber when it involves crawling around in a spider infested crawl space, working with poop, or similar things I am willing to oay someone to do.
In one of the larger companies in Sweden in the third largest city Malmö that sell to both other companies and consumers none of the staff knew what I was talking about when I mentioned that BSP and NPT are different. Neither people on the floor nor people answering the phone. These were what appeared to be experienced plumbers. It’s amazing.
I had to learn the arcane world of pipe fitting sizes working with pneumatics for a scuba equipment project. It is extremely confusing. Unfortunately, it can have fatal consequences. In a recent story, a scuba store employee used the wrong size fitting on a 3,000 psi scuba tank which shot out and killed them.
Seeing that American can't even adopt the metric system, I have little hope for a clear international standard for pipe fittings.
All Americans completely understand the metric system. We can convert anything to anything in our heads. By the way, we all speak a dozen foreign languages fluently, just choose not to. It is because we are so humble that you do not know this.
Of other industrial interest re: pipes, sch40 and sch80 hot dip galvanized pipes in various outer diameters are also a standard item for telecom construction projects.
For when you want to have a pipe-to-pipe adapter to hang a radio on a tower, or wall mount it on top of a building mechanical penthouse or similar.
One thing I’ve learned the hard way is that you need those little gasket seals on the inside to avoid a leak but if you over tighten the connection with a gasket inside you can actually get a leak just from over tightening it!
When I had to do some plumbing I found that everything was undocumented. One source would tell you to refer to the documentation published by the manufacturer of the fitting, which is of course impossible to find.
I had a doctor once who was quitting his solo practice and taking a regular job at a hospital, having become disillusioned with the biz. He said his house was bought by a plumber, who was trading up.
The process itself is straight forward but I had to work in a really tight space under the sink. That was really what made it a pain in the ass. I had to lay on my back and cram myself underneath the sink in the cabinet to reach everything plus I'm a 6' tall goon so that definitely wasn't helping either. You're just stuck in an awkward and uncomfortable position most of the time.
Same experience installing a dishwasher. Inside a small cavity accessible only by climbing over my new dishwasher and avoiding the existing washing machine, crouching using leg muscles I rarely ever use, with the only light coming from a torch, on flooring made damp from dripping pipes that I hadn't tightened enough, arms getting sore from lifting them above my shoulders for extended periods, I understood why plumbers get paid what they get paid.
Sinks are one of the few areas that I don't think one can get out of using threaded connections on the supply lines (haven't seen push-to-connect for that last leg yet). A lot of them use NPT threads, and NPT is very easy to put together in a way that will have a slow leak. Even a single drop every few minutes can cause big problems if left unattended for long enough. Also, a lot of the connections are in locations that are a headache to reach, even with a basin wrench.
Getting a good seal on a sink drain can be a little tricky the first time too.
The sink supply connections (usually from a shutoff valve) are compression threads (a parallel/straight thread).
If the valve itself is threaded on, that inlet might be NPT (or might be compression), but the valve outlet will be compression, which uses a tapered ferrule to provide the seal and straight threads.
The faucets I've seen are generally NPS where the supply lines attach to the faucet, often with the retaining nuts (or whatever they're called) using the same threads and going on first.
To answer GGP's question, what's difficult about faucets is getting up behind the sink, with your back straddling the corner of the cabinet, reaching up with some sort of basin wrench that inevitably won't grip those bespoke retaining nuts well. Especially removing the old faucet where the retaining nuts are a bit seized.
> The sink supply connections (usually from a shutoff valve) are compression threads
I've seen both compression and NPT. I only have three faucet-replacement data points to work from, but I haven't developed a feeling for why manufacturers will choose NPT in some cases.
Compression fittings are pretty straightforward, IMO. No complaints from me about those.
This article sucks. Lots of bad info from an inexperienced plumber.
How the US military, nuclear power plants, and plumbers worth their weight in salt do fittings: 3-4 times around the (male) fitting with PTFE tape, then a light amount of pipe dope on top of the PTFE tape.
Also, DO NOT buy the cheap PTFE tape as suggest. Buy the milspec tape. Your big box store will have both and you'll know where that money (a couple dollars at most) went.
Milspec, lol. Doesn't that normally equal as cheap as they can get away with?
There is a high-density thread sealing PTFE tape that works a bit better than the el' cheapo generic white stuff (although it's usually white too). Anything marked as such should be sufficient unless you are working on an oil rig or nuclear reactor.
EDIT: Unless the package has MIL-T-27730 on the tape, labeling it milspec has no meaning.
3-4 times around the (male) fitting with PTFE tape, then a light amount of pipe dope on top of the PTFE tape.
That doesn't sound like a good idea at all. The whole idea behind PTFE (aka Teflon) is that it reduces friction because nothing, including pipe dope, sticks to it. What value does the pipe dope add to a properly-wrapped fitting?
Mate, I'm not a plumber and it's 100% written from the perspective of someone who is not a plumber. This article is not an instruction manual for plumbers, but a blog of what a non-plumber found to work for him.
Also, I work with NPT fittings quite a lot:
> For what it’s worth, I tightly wrap the tape 10 times round the male thread and get an enraged mountain gorilla to tighten it up.
This is a WTF NO!!! for NPT and I’ll assume a WTF NO!!! for BSPT as well. You need about 1.5 wraps of PTFE tape to seal a fitting. Any more is wasteful and asking for leaks (or damage, if you’re using plastic fittings). It helps if you use the correct tape width for the fittings (1/4”, 1/2”, and 1” for me) and develop a wrapping method that keeps the tape under tension at all time and in such a direction that threading it into the fitting doesn’t unwrap the tape.
Also, in my experience, when someone inexperienced first learns what pipe tape is, they try to apply it to everything. 20 wraps around a tapered pipe? Wrap a Swagelok fitting? Try to make a butt joint or an adapter for two pieces of plastic tubing? I’ve seen it all.