DIY: What are the advantages and disadvantage of using "pushfit" pipe fittings? [solved]
There are many makes of pushfit pipe fittings that make it a lot easer to join pipes, incluing copper pipes, e,g:
- John Guest Speedfit
- Cuprofit®- copper push fit
- Hepworth-HEP20
(please expand the list if you know of any others)
How do I decide if I should use them rather than soldered copper fittings?
If I use to use a pushfit system, how do I choose the one to use?
I've been a bit cynical of these but tried push-fit on my last project -- works a treat.
Pros: it's really really fast and easy, you're more likely to get it right first time, and you can use PEX tubing which is lovely and flexible, so brilliant for doing e.g. taps for a basin on a stud partition.
Cons: expensive. Much more expensive. And you'd not want to use them on exposed pipework.
The early plastic-to-copper fittings, besides being expensive, revealed a problem a few years after installation in a seasonal house where the water was off during the winter. (Cabin in the Great White North.) It turns out that the plastic parts, once wetted, don't like to be dried out -- they will crack and harden as they age, like all plastics, and may become brittle. They may have fixed this in recent generations of the product, but it's something to be leery of if you're doing a whole house with them and plan to enclose all of the fittings in walls.
I'd be a little less leery of the ones with the PEX that require the compression ring... but I'd use them with PEX.
I found them hard to put in securely when limited pipe is exposed, and difficult to remove. Compression ring fittings are an alternative.
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