Leaky hot water heater flex fitting

[Paul]

I'm not understanding how this fitting works.... I'm used to seeing a compression fitting with a big nut over the (left) copper side of the fitting... this fitting looks like the brass side is one solid piece, with a dielectric plastic sleeve inside.... it has developed a small leak on the right (stainless?) side where the stainless nut holds the flex line. Is this one of those new push on fittings perhaps?

I tried tightening the brass/stainless junction holding a plier on the brass nut and a pliers on the stainless nut and applied opposing force.. the nut went maybe an 1/16 or an 1/8 turn and that was about it. Leak is still there. I noticed that the left side (brass/dielectric) rotated about the copper pipe a bit when I applied the pliers to the brass nut.

Pictures below:

Note the rust ring, and drop of water leaking at the bottom of the flex line side:

-- Paul

[Jon Danniken]

Well first of all, you don't use pliers on those connections, you use two pipe wrenches. They are cheap enough and useful enough to warrant buying a set.

If you installed this connection with pliers in the first place, your newly acquired pipe wrenches should snug it up to stop the leak.

If not, and if the leak is with the flex connector on the right, just spend the $10 and buy a new one; I'd just go with a copper/brass one instead of stainless.

There comes a point with plumbing where one realizes that the time spent doing the job right the first time is a far, far better deal than chasing problems then, or down the road.

Jon

[Paul]

I'll communicate this to the professional plumber that installed this about

6 months ago. I wonder how many callbacks he gets on these fittings?

-- Paul

[Paul]

I took off the old flex line and the rubber washer inside the leaky fitting was pretty well crushed. I guess the plumber overtightened it... Tried to reseat it but it still leaked a little... so I just bought a new flex line, snugged it up, no more leaks. The new flex line has what looks like a teflon bushing between the nut and the flex line, whereas the old flex line nut assembly seemed to be metal-on-metal where the water was dripping out.

-- Paul