I’m finally getting around to finishing a patio on the back of an addition to our house. The addition was finished over a year ago. The patio? Soon, I hope. The patio will someday include an outdoor cooking setup, so I made sure that electricity, hot and cold water, and a drain were all available on the outside.
For reasons known only to the plumber, the hot water comes out the side of the building and has a shutoff valve installed, while the cold water was run under the slab forms to the outside, capped with a threaded cap. After building the retaining wall and filling the patio, the cold water was now buried about 18 inches underground. I wasn’t looking forward to shutting off the water, digging it up, and sweating additional pipe onto the end to bring it above ground. I rate my copper pipe sweating skills as decent at best, so a job like this could easily go awry and result in an extended water outage.
While I was at the hardware store to buy the copper fittings I needed I saw the “Sharkbite” display. I’ve seen them before but hadn’t given them a try. Based on the recommendation of the hardware store guy (”They’re like candy”) I got a couple to see how they work. To look at them you’d think “no way”. They look like a brass version of the “John Guest” connectors you see on refrigerator and RO filters. The body is metal but the working parts on the inside are all plastic. This is going to seal to a 3/4″ copper pipe that has been buried in the ground for a year? I got some conventional copper fittings just in case.
I was very happy with the results, however. What a great gadget this thing is. About 10x the cost of a regular sweat fitting but it snaps together in a couple seconds, doesn’t leak, and it actually allows the pipe to swivel around! It took longer to fill the hole in than it did to install the additional pipe to bring the connection to grade level. The fitting has a little plastic collar that you can push back to release the pipe, making it reusable. I’d be curious to know how durable that connection is. If the pipes move around a lot, due to water hammer, will it eventually start to leak? With mine buried in the dirt I’m not too worried about it moving.
These fittings seem to be a lifesaver. Sweating pipes that have moisture in them is one difficult task. You can jam a piece of bread in the pipe to block the water, but it doesn't always work. The Sharkbite fasteners seem to help where conventional or PEX fittings fail.
In my expeirence a few years back as a plumber's assistant, these are GREAT for just making a couple of connections but you wouldn't want to plumb your entire house with them due to the price. Particularly if you're connecting copper to pex or PVC, but also handy if you are re-routing copper pipes or connecting to existing copper. As most people know, as you solder the pipe, you must always leave one end open so that the expanding air can escape from inside the pipe. This presents a problem sometime when re-connecting new plumbing to the old piping unless you have a valve you can leave open or something that allows you to leave that escape route for the air as you solder.
Even though the existing plumbing may be turned off, dry inside, and very well cleaned, if there is no place for air to escape, your solder will "blow out" as the air heats up inside the pipe and after the water is restored, you will end up with a leak (which is now MUCH harder to fix because your pipe is full of water again.
Anyway, these fittings are awesome for such an application, plumb up your new system, sweat all your joints, then push the sharkbite fitting onto your old plumbing and then your new plumbing and presto!
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I’m finally getting around to finishing a patio on the back of an addition to our house. The addition was finished over a year ago. The patio? Soon, I hope. The patio will someday include an outdoor cooking setup, so I made sure that electricity, hot and cold water, and a drain were all available on the outside.
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