I am planning to install a freeze-free hose bib. I'd rather not sweat the pipe and instead plan to use compression fittings. However, in the past, it always seemed that no matter how tight I thought I had the fitting, it always seems to drip and I would tighten until I was afraid of snapping something. Is there some secret that I'm not aware of in using them?
Hi, Over tightening is no good. Tony
If you don't want to sweat, there is an epoxy that worked fine the two times I used it 2 years ago. I got mine at Lowes.
A big down side is that when I wanted to use it last week it had gone bad. (I did notice that one of the caps wasn't on real good, but poor design made that difficult.) So, $7/joint is pretty expensive if you just have the one. Much easier to justify if you can use it a few times before it expires.
There is also a cyanoacrylic on the market, but I haven't gotten around to trying it yet.
If you keep it in the freezer compartment of the kitchen fridhge it'll stay good "forever". I've got some electrically conductive epoxy that I've had in there over 15 years now, and the darn stuff works like new whenever I need a dab to fix something "unsolderable" like an aluminum magnet wire joint.
If the compression fittings have conventional ferrules, I've had great luck wrapping a turn of teflon tape twisted into a "string" around the side of the ferrule opposite the nut so that it gets squished between the ferrule, the tubing and the body of the fiting.
HTH,
Jeff
Soak the fitting, ferrule, etc. generously with oil before tightening. Changes the coefficient of friction.
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