Although I'm not time served, I would consider myself a reasonably capable plumber. Been plumbing with copper and plastic and even done a bit of lead dressing over the last 40 years without too many problems. I now however find myself beaten by push fit tap connecters. I have been building my selfbuild dream home for the last few years and approx 3 years ago bought a truck load of plumbing stuff from screwfix, including 30 or so flexible push fit tap connecters with integral isolation valve. Not sure what make they are but the push fit end is black with a white screw which operates the isolation ball shut off. I have near enough finished the pipework using Floplast barrier pipe and have started to connect up the sanitary ware. When I try to push the pie with insert into the Tap connecter, the pipe will not go past the O ring in the push fit tap connecter... take the insert out and there's no problem.... put the insert back in the end of the pipe and there is no way the pipe will go past the O ring. I had no problem with the pipe with the Floplast fittings. I Have tried a few of the tap connecters and they're all the same. What am I doing wrong ???? Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks All.
I think the pipe, connectors, inserts and fittings should all be from the same company but Floplast don't seem to be good. I had a problem with some Floplast fittings and the manager in the screwfix store basically told me it was my fault, I took them all back and bought new fittings from Wickes and all was fine.
Had the same problem with the push fit on a Salamander pump on Friday. I was using Speedfit superseal inserts. Changed them for the plain inserts (like you use for compression fittings) and no problems.
yep that's what it is, if you're using floplast pipe the internal dia is slighly smaller, so if you'r forcing a speedfit insert in, you're expanding the outside diameter of the pipe making it bigger than the fitting,
It's never a good idea to use different pushfit systems they never work well together,but all work with copper.My advice would be use tap connectors that are of the same make as the pipe you have installed and stick the others on eBay.