My tip for these PITA inventions is compress them up then undo them and coat the olive in a healthy dose of Fernox-LSX silicone or similar.
Spent many hours Saturday faffing around behind the newly fixed basin & pedestal with a tissue trying to find several weepers.
Silicone (as above) and a cup of tea while it cured did the job a treat.
pushfit, pushfit, pushfit :-)
Not how they are designed to work though: I hope they hold in the long term!
David
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Pet @
Or simply give them a smear of Boss White or similar before you do them up in the first place.
aka jollop
So it's a rotten useless joint, then.
Use the best quality fitting like Conex, and a very slight smear of jointing compound and no probs. Don't buy cheap crap.
Push into the bin.
If you need to use plastic pipe use good quality compression joints with the olive wrapped in PTFE on the plastic pipe. A far better and cheaper joint than pushfit. Also easily demountable.
Yes, strange. After fitting 2 loos, basins, bath and kitchen I ended up fitting about 20 compression onto new and (and sometimes used) olives, with no leaks ever. Maybe he stopped tightening when he heard it creaking. I tighten to the creak, then another 1/8 turn. Stop.
Cheers
Paul.
Most makers say turn hand tight then one full turn.
You forgot to draw-file them with a bastard file, or do them up with
3' stillsons.
I found that copper olives seem to seal better than brass. I suspect it's because copper is softer than brass.
Andy.
On Tue, 11 Oct 2005 00:18:52 +0100, "Andy" scrawled:
I've never had a problem with copper or brass olives on decent or cheap crap compression fittings. 99% of mine have had the aforementioned Boss White treatment.
who said anything about plastic ?
Well you only have their word to go by, having never tightened one yourself.
I generally find that there's no need to tighten that much - after all its easy enough to nip them up a bit if the weep, but there's not much you can do if you over-tighten them and damage the olive.
I'd say either the pipe or fittings were damaged in some way - assuming you could get enough purchase to tighten them fully.
But I always put a few turns of PTFE round the olive before tightening after cleaning the pipes to soldering standards.
All the pushfits I have worked with simply needed the collar to be depressed to release. No need for a spanner. How easy is that? No need for even a spanner.
Also PTFE tape is for use on taper threads, not on compression joints. It is capable of making even Swagelok fittings leaky.
John Schmitt
Well, I apprenticed as a mechanic, so must of the tightening I do is by feel. If it feels tight it is tight. It's hard to describe to someone or put into words.
Cheers
Paul.
Only Speedfit, or the cloned Speedfit does that.
Most pushfit is difficult to demount. A compression joint on plastic pipe is much superior to only relying on a very thin O ring - and cheaper. Even with expensive plastic pipe cutters the odd nick can be left on the pipe end and the O ring can be nipped. Then the grab rings can fail and the fitting shoots out leaving a full open end. Some of the grab rings and corrode with time if on the wet side of the O ring, again failing and catastrophic failures. A compression joint is much more forgiving. No contest use compression on plastic instead of pushfit fitting, which can take some force to push on, especially in awkward locations.
Many in the trade have moved over to good quality compression joints when using plastic pipes, completely disregarding and type of pushfit fitting..
The plastic makers recommend the olive is wrapped with PTFE. I do not recommend that an olive is wrapped with PTFE on a copper pipe, just a "smear" of jointing paste.
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