I have the now banned plastic plumbing in my place. The copper manifolds that attach to the incoming (copper) lines and send the water throughout the house in the plastic lines are leaking.
Anybody have any ideas on going from the copper to the plastic? The old tools that once accomplished this task are apparently not common.
Thanks.
Just get threaded fittings for both copper and PVC and use a threaded union. Any good hardware store or big box home improvement store should have what you need.
The tricky part and this isn’t easy to explain is how to get a union in an already existing line. You may find yourself in a situation where you need to make the lengths exact to get them to fit but once you do you’ll have no room to get the pipes apart to connect them. You may need to add a few extra elbows in order to assemble the connection.
Hmm, which banned plastic? The flexi-uruthane that was banned in areas that freeze hard or the more recently banned high density polyethlyne?
PVC cement will not work on either if thats what you have. You will need to use compression fittings or a threaded bayonnette fitting w/ a hose clamp.
If the pipe is CPVC the outside diameters are different than standard PVC you need to get the correct fits and a special orange cement.
Oops forgot to include the banned polybutylene. Use bayonette style fittings.
An easy way is to sweat a male fit on to the copper and a male bayonette (insert type) to the plastic then connect them with a braided steel hose. Not exactly up to code but it will save you a lot of headache trying to thread to pieces of pipe together.
I have polibutilene piping in my boat and I use barbed inserts (similar to the ones used for hose) into the PB tube and then a clamp around it and have never had a problem. The PB is kind of hard, especially when cold, so I heat it to get the barbed insert in .
Thanks for the ideas guys!
I’ll have to dig up the info on the type of stuff I have. I think it is the gray polybutylene (sp?) stuff. I remember that the manifold that I have was pictured in the recall notice and was not included in the recall - even if it were included I believe the recall has run out of time for me.
use male/female adapters to connect the copper to plastic. you can buy what is known as a slip coupling for the copper , it has no stops in it. Cut the copper slip the coupling on one end clean and paste and slide the coupling over the cut and solder, just remember to have some way to vent
The gray pipe is usually polybutylene, and was the subject of a class action.This should be helpful in making the determination of whether or not the moment has passed.
Ensure that your repair action is consistent and compliant with local plumbing codes or you may get burnt when selling the dwelling.