CPVC and plumbing

[Lamb]

Who has experience with CVPC and plumbing to give me some tips so I don't mess things up? LOL

I just now realized that our plumbing is all CVPC and I need to replace a toilet shut off valve in the master bathroom. I THOUGHT it was a metal pipe because there is a cover over the CVPC to help keep the metal cover plate in place. ugh.

I'm guessing that I need to buy a ratcheting pipe cutter to remove the old fitting (shutting off water and all that jazz first) and I might need an adapter if I don't have enough pipe or if it gets brittle and breaks? Yikes.

One of my questions is do I need to wait 6 hours for the cement to dry before I can turn the water back on at the main? That's what one guy said in a YouTube comments and he said if you only wait 4 hours you'll have drips?

What else do I need to know?

 

[vince284]

6 hours sounds excessive unless you are bonding 6" pipe in 30F or 75% humidity. With normal water pressure I would think one hour would okay. But maybe check with the company.

 

[Lamb]

6 hours sounds excessive unless you are bonding 6" pipe in 30F or 75% humidity. With normal water pressure I would think one hour would okay. But maybe check with the company.

Vince, have you ever used a push to fit shut off valve? I looked a couple hours ago and saw that SharkBite said that they weren't compatible but CPVC but now I'm seeing that the listings are including CPVC. It would be great not to have to mess with the glue!

 

[vince284]

Vince, have you ever used a push to fit shut off valve? I looked a couple hours ago and saw that SharkBite said that they weren't compatible but CPVC but now I'm seeing that the listings are including CPVC. It would be great not to have to mess with the glue!

I have used a push fit and it feels scary because i think it will leak. But at least i have been okay with it. It's all new stuff to me too. If you try it, let us know how it works. Other than having a little water to clean up it shouldn't be bad. Unless you are going on vacation when you finish you're project. Lol you'll come home to a swimming pool.

 

[tango]

I can't comment on PVC pipes - the only experience I have of using them is as an overflow pipe, so one end is always open. Six hours seems like a long time but if that's what the glue says then it's probably better to follow it rather than cut a corner and end up having to do the job again.

I've used push-fit attachments on copper and PEX and can second the fear that this thing will surely blow off the pipe under pressure and I'll have an unwanted fountain in my basement. But they don't come off unless you pry them off with a special tool. The tool is pretty cheap - I think I paid a total of less than $5 for a 1", 3/4" and 1/2" removal tool. The first time I really used push-fit where it counted was when I cut into a 3/4" heating pipe that fed two radiators and used PEX to join it on to 1" heating pipe, so I could get another radiator activated. (That radiator had previously been on a heating loop I drained, which meant the area it heated was getting cold over the winter).

What you could try doing if you've got two people to work on it is to use a push-fit attachment, then slowly turn the water back on to see if it's leaking. Wrap a piece of toilet paper around it so you can see very quickly if any water leaks out. If it does, turn the water off quickly and try again. That's pretty good practise anyway, especially if you're new to plumbing. The few plumbing jobs I've done have been much the same - check everything looks as it should, then very slowly turn the water back on while watching like a hawk for the slightest leakage, until the water is at full pressure and it all seems to be holding.

If you're going to use push-fit you may find it helps to push one onto a piece of pipe that isn't installed in the house. That way you can get a feel for how hard you have to push it on before you can't pull it off by hand, and then get a feel for how to get it off with the removal tool. It's often easier to get to grips with something like that using a piece of pipe you can move around freely, before you start working in a confined space with short pipes that you can't just pull out an extra few inches.