Any Plumbing Expertise Here?

Automatic Washer - The world's coolest Washing Machines, Dryers and Dishwashers

Help Support :

danemodsandy

danemodsandy

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 6, 2006
Messages
8,180
Location
The Bramford, Apt. 7-E
Considering the number of elaborate laundry room installations represented on this board, I'm hoping someone can help with a dumb plumbing question.

The cold water supply line to our single-control Delta faucet broke (flood, damage, long story, yadda yadda yadda). It's grey PVC (house built in '83, whaddya expect, quality er sumthin'?).

Anyway, the Delta faucet does not have standard threaded nipples under it, to which today's braided supply lines would simply screw. Ooooh noooo! That would be way too simple. The faucet has two copper tubes coming from its underside, and those are connected to the PVC tubing with a strange brass compression fitting the likes of which I've never seen. The attached Paint drawing shows what I have. Only one of the copper tubes coming from the faucet, and only one supply line, are shown for clarity.

Does anyone know what this fitting is called, how it works, etc.? This is a rental, and while I'm happy to fix the broken line (absentee landlord anyway), I'm not looking to replace the faucet if it's not necessary.

Any knowledgeable help would be appreciated. I can see it's a compression fitting, but I can't see how it holds the PVC in place. Thanks!

10-29-2007-01-22-20--danemodsandy.jpg
 
Delta Help

If your Delta copper supply lines have a male thread on the end, you can get at Lowes/HD a supply line which has a Delta female end. The other end of this supply line would have a 3/8 compression fitting which would thead onto ur supply valve
Hope this helpful
 
Hey Sandy

If I were you I would take the broken piece to any hardware or take a picture and tell them what's up and I'm sure they can tell you the correct fitting.
 
In our last house we had this problem. It seems that the ends of the copper tubing coming out of the faucet had to be "flared" before it would fit in the compression fitting. I went to Home Depot and a guy in the plumbing department used a special tool on it to flare it so it would fit the compression fitting. The whole time he was doing this for me he was telling us that he wasn't supposed to be doing this for us, he is supposed to be selling us the tool to do it ourselves instead.
 
What seems like the simplest most straight-forward plumbing job never fails to turn out to be more complicated and involve a couple of return trips to the hardware store.

I bought the ideal American Standard faucet for my bathroom when I did some upgrades several years ago and when I found it needed some kind of specialized fitting to connect it that was exclusive to American Standard, I returned it and got a Price Pfister that I slapped right in with no trouble at all.

Good luck and I hope you find the part you need at Lowe's or HD per the advice further up.
 
Mystery Solved!

Update:

I finally got this resolved with a trip to Ace Hardware, where the sales help actually knows what they're talking about. It turns out that the part I labelled "Mystery Compression Fitting" is actually two fittings screwed together. The small top one is part of the faucet's supply line. The larger bottom one unscrews, and you then replace the plastic line with an identical one; the plastic line has a flare intended to fit into the compression fitting. The replacement is PEX, instead of the failure-prone PVC of the original.

So, all's well that ends well, and I really appreciate the responses and help here!
 
ACE

I love my handy walking-distance ACE Hardware. It's a big store and is on par with your typical OSH for those familiar with that chain. It's always crawling, indeed overrun, with staff. Not all of them are helpful as I think there's some kind of Junior Achievement/work experience thing happening there, but there are plenty of helpful hardware men also. I have a major crush on one of them but he's either very discreet, very clueless or has yet to switch on his gaydar. He posesses certain traits that would indicate he's playing for my same team but so far I haven't been able to get past the professional and cordial facade which never fails to melt me in my tracks. I don't give up easily though, and often find myself needing to run down to ACE for SOMEthing just to enjoy this hunk of eye candy. I had a great time recently when I bought a few lengths of chain for an entertainment "device." Advised the hunk that I needed chain that would accommodate at least 250 pounds . . . hint hint. He was completely professional and advised that if I was going to "suspend" anything I should really go with aircraft cabling but this application requires chain so that it can be adjusted. I enjoyed seeing his big arms working the giant bolt cutters as he measured out my 4 lengths. I wondered whether he had any idea of how they would be used. I was so hoping for the opportunity to pique his curiosity but I should have known he'd handle the entire process in a strictly professional manner.

I had a problem with the gas tubing to my old water heater, it had a small leak at the compression fitting on the valve, and a different guy at my ACE went to a lot of trouble trying to find me a new fitting and couldn't so he ended up re-flaring the end of the tubing and that was all that was necessary. Yes, I do love my ACE store and I can't bring myself to give up hope that one day I will manage to get my helpful hunk to assist with an entirely different sort of . . . er . . . hard-ware issue.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top