Since my toilet needed repair and I couldn’t fix it Saturday night while hardware stores were closed and I had people in the house who would be inconvenienced by me turning off all the water in the house overnight and the toilet shutoff valve was seized and I had another valve lying around, I installed a new toilet shutoff valve on Saturday night.
I’d bought the valve some time ago but hadn’t gotten a round tuit. The one I bought was threaded on the “in” side and I had also bought a copper threaded fitting because I thought I’d thank myself the next time the valve was needed and was seized.
So I soldered the copper fitting to the pipe, wrapped on some Teflon tape, turned off the valve and turned on the water. Rats! it’s leaking at the threaded joint. Tightening didn’t fix it. Re-assembling made it somewhat better but still drippy. A lot of slow tighten-a-little-is-it-better-or-worse?-loosen-a-little-is-it-better-or-worse?-repeat-until-tired got it to the point where it was just a tiny seeping - not enough to get the floor damp - maybe a drip every two minutes - can’t get anything wet this winter as long as the heat duct right beside it comes on every few hours - but definitely seeping.
Anyone know what I did wrong? Maybe this is deep denial but is this self-repairing? Will it get worse?
Thanks in advance for your assault on my ignorance.
teflon tape isn’t the best for many plumbing uses, it can prevent you from tightening it enough.
plumbing joints have a taper which combines having thread contact with lots of being tight. plumbing dope can be used which doesn’t obstruct tightening.
Plumbing dope will also set up. I’ve noticed the biggest problem when at least one part is a stainless steel part. The threads strip easily or the part breaks off. Striped off threads equals leak.
My guess, without being able to see what you’ve done, is that you’ve mixed tapered and non-tapered threads - probably something like a regular pipe fitting onto a compression fitting.
There are several different kinds of fittings used over the years for toilet water supplies, and they’re all almost-but-not-really compatible.
Sometimes, it’s easiest to start fresh with a new valve, new water line and new fill valve so you know that there’s no mixups with thread types and sizes, or Og forbid, “Chicago” fittings.
In my experience very slow leaks do self-repair to some extent - I don’t know the mechanism but it might be due to “silting” (by which I mean solid particles clogging up the leak).
I couldn’t fully visualise what parts you were threading together but I wouldn’t be inclined to use teflon tape on a copper fitting. I would definitely use it on a steel threaded fitting, but when joining two copper parts (whether threaded or compression fitting) I would rely on the copper being soft and deforming a little.
Note: I am not in any way a plumber, so my advice may not be worth much.
Never even heard of plumbing dope but I got some on my way home, swapped out the Teflon tape and that joint is now, as they say in the plumbing biz, dry as a fart.
johnpost, Harmonius Discord, gotpasswords and hibericus: I thank you and my toilet thanks you.