Plumbing Lessons Learned

Most of my posts focus on successes, and hide the fact that sometimes there is a learning process, or trial and error, involved in home projects. Here’s an example of a lesson learned: In the process of hooking up the new plumbing fixtures in the guest house to the water that was brought in by the Hardin Access Pipeline, I had to go from a 1 inch threaded to a 3/4 inch PVC pipe. I first attempted to do this by going from a 1″ threaded female to a 1″ threaded female to female to a 1″ to 3/4″ brass threaded downsized to a 3/4″ threaded to a 3/4″ PVC sharkbite. This was the solution the guys at the Home Depot came up with, but it was way too complicated and caused major problems in the tightening process, since tightening either fixture on either side of the 1″ threaded female to female pipe caused the other fixture to loosen. I was able to get it 99% of the way there, but unfortunately the remaining 1% caused there to be a small drip. I tried to fix this with flex seal, which I’ve used in the past to fix leaks that occur in existing plumbing, but it was a lost cause:

Ultimately, I had to bite the bullet and cut out all of those fixtures, and simplify. I went with a 1″ threaded to 1″ sharkbite, and used copper pipes to connect to a 1″ to 3/4″ sharkbite intersection, which connected to all of my other plumbing with no leaks!

While this was a $70 lesson, it certainly beats the alternative of battling leaky plumbing in the future.