Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Take That, You Dirty Copper

This is one of the coolest, most ass-kicking new products I've seen in a long time.

The SharkBite® Push Fittings™ represent a brand new addition to Cash Acme's expanding product line. Each fitting increases ease of use while decreasing the time and effort needed to connect water distribution pipe. The pipe is inserted into the fitting and held in place by several metal "teeth" and a durable O-ring. The joint can be disassembled only with a SharkBite® demount clip.


I used them to cap a couple copper water lines today that I had to cut to make room for a dishwasher and a new sink cabinet.

1. Shut off water.
2. Cut pipes.
3. Push fittings on.

Took about two minutes. No soldering (always a plus if working in tight spaces or near hazardous materials), no wondering if you've cranked the compression fitting on tight enough, and as their brochure says, "No unions".

And this wasn't exactly shiny-smooth pipe, right off the rack, either. These lines were put in sometime in the Carter administration, and had been painted several times over the decades. I scraped the paint off, hit it with the emery cloth to shine it up a bit, and that was it.



As watertight as a frog's asshole.

Fittings can rotate in place and can be removed and reused. When I'm ready to run the water lines up to the new sink, all I have to do is pop off the cap, and attach the already-assembled run of new pipe.

They cost a lot more than traditional copper fittings, but for the amount of time you save (not to mention what a plumber would charge you for doing it the old-fashioned way just showing up), these things kick ass.

And, oh yeah, they work with Pex tubing too - a lot cheaper and much easier to work with than copper.