Perplexing PLX

[Texaro]

I just finished running a ¾ supply bypass through my attic crawl space due to a slab leak in the buried ¾ copper line.

Everything went OK, but I noticed just a hint of moisture at two ¾ unions (not on the same connector). I waited about 6 hours and the moisture stopped occurring. When I ran my finger along the PLX where it entered the coupling at first I saw a slight streak of water – later my finger stayed dry.

Is this typical? Is this a sign that something’s wrong and I need to re-do it?

I’m very happy with the ease of installing PLX to copper and to itself, and the unions are so simple! It sure beats lying on your side, holding a heat shield, a torch, a light etc. in a 115+ degree attic! Nice stuff, but I’m just a little nervous about the damp joint that dried up on its own – Any comments?

(By the by – a big THANK YOU for your blog – I never would have considered the stuff until y’all turned me on to it)

 

[Cass]

Do you mean PEX?

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Jadnashua]

Were you using the crimp rings or the expander/ring? If you use the expander tool, my guess is that while it contracts fairly quickly, it takes it awhile before it reaches it's original diameter. If you used a crimping tool and crimp ring...did you check it with the go/no-go gauge? This is just a guess...

 

[Texaro]

OOPS!

Yeah, you're right - it's PEX!

The fittings were from Lowe's. They just pushed together. I did make note of how far they were to have gone in and stuck them together hard enough to seat where they should have gone.

They're still dry !

 

[Cass]

Is there a brass fitting with a crimp ring on each side of the fitting?

Or did you use the white fittings that you just push on over the pipe??

 

[Jadnashua]

Sounds like the Wats push on fittings. I've never used them or the Sharkbite fittings, but at least like the looks of the Sharkbite fittings better. When you insert the tubing into those type of fittings, you are compressing the O-ring over the tubing. SOmetimes it can take it a little bit to return to "normal" and make the seal.

 

[Texaro]

I dug one of the wrappers out from the trash. The unions are made by WATTS, called Water PEX. The tubing is also PEX. The unions have what looks like an O ring about an inch inside the union that I guess seals the water while the tubing itself is held in place with a kind of split O ring that moves just a little in when you slide it over the tubing. You can open the union by pulling back on the outer O ring thing while pulling the tubing out from the union. Kind of like those basket style Chinese finger traps. The harder you pull them apart the tighter they seem to grab, but can be opened by reversing the pressure.

http://www.watts.com/pro/_productsFull_tree.asp?catId=71&parCat=409&pid=3623&ref=2