Outdoor plumbing repair

[Bill]

My son has a tap in his garden that feeds a vertical fairly thick walled rubbery plastic pipe to a right angle connector. From there water was fed via buried rubbery pipe to 3 taps located at various quite long distances around the garden.

Last Winter in the frost, the rubber pipe to connector started leaking and produced a huge ice sculpture.

As a temporary bodge, I stuck a bar from a socket set in the end of the tube and held it there with a clip. It looked as though the inside of the connector was smooth and the rubbery pipe had been glued into place. There was no sign of anything looking like an olive.

I took some measurements and visited a couple of usually good merchants looking to buy some sort of connection arrangement, but only got talk like "that's imperial, haven't seen anything like that for years". They also said that any glue they sold would be useless because it would either not work or dissolve the plastic.

I've put some pics that might be visible at

simple low-cost suggestions? I know I should have measured the pipe again before writing this, but forgot. It's about an inch od.

[Andrew Mawson]

leaking

merchants

OK so it looks like a 3/4" imperial compression elbow. You need a short stub of 3/4" copper pipe sweated to a suitable pipe barb to suit the inner diameter of the rubbery hose, and a 3/4" imperial olive. (No size references in the photo so it may be 1/2" imperial in which case

15mm olives can be pressed in to service.)

Imperial olives are available but need searching for. Beware that the measurement here is the pipe bore not the outside. There are 3/4" copper olives widely available used by air conditioning outfits, but their pipe is measured on the outside!!!!

AWEM

[Andrew Mawson]

would

OR: you could carefully remove the 3/4" elbow, sweat a hose barb into the free end, and re-assemble it where it was.

AWEM

[Dave Liquorice]

That pipe looks suspiciously like the black alkathene that out mains water supply is in. And the elbow a compression elbow. When I had to repair(*) that pipe I got some metal inserts that fitted (slighly loose) and used a 22mm compression fitting. It hasn't leaked.

(*) Who runs a mains water pipe through a waste pipe FFS!

[tredingtonmill]

Try an agricultural supplier, there are plenty of farms with imperial pipework in place.

Jonathan

[Geoff B.]

I successfully used these fittings on alkathene pipe last year;

Plumbers' Merchant stocked them;

pipe is sized by its internal diameter eg. 3/4"

HTH.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Bill saying something like:

That looks like Alkathene pipe, beloved of farmers. Hie thee doon to a farm supplies stockist and get the necessary fittings. You'll probably find the outside will take a 3/4" (or 22mm) olive and once it's compressed into place the pipe won't budge (it's the 3/4" OD, 1/2" ID pipe, I assume). You don't need an insert for the thick walled stuff.

[Bill]

In message , Grimly Curmudgeon writes

Thanks for all the replies. Very helpful, unlike the weather today.

I'll measure up, find suppliers - agricultural or the Grahams near us - buy some bits and wait for a day when we are both there and the rain stops.