The low point drains on my RV trailer are two PEX tubes, one red and one blue, with a threaded adaptor on the end and caps on the adaptors. The red one is the hot water system, and the blue one is the cold water system. After removing the caps a couple of times when it was freezing cold outside I read with interest about people who installed taps on the adaptors instead of the caps.
I ordered two of these taps, also color coded for hot and cold, and attempted to install them. The cold one worked fine, at least it did after I also ran out and bought some teflon tape. Before I put teflon tape on them, the water pump would run every 12 seconds or so, and the tap was dripping. The hot one, on the other hand, was a disaster. The tap got slightly cross threaded, and because the tap is metal and the adaptor is plastic, it basically dug it’s own thread pattern into the adaptor and I was unable to rethread it so it would go on properly. Fortunately the end cap still went on just fine with no leaks, so I was able to kick the can down the road a bit.
When I decided it was time to do something about it, I thought that what I’m going to have to do is remove that adaptor, and replace it with something else. But in an effort to be cheap, I didn’t want to buy the specialized tools you need to remove and replace the crimp ring/clamp ring that was holding the adaptor on. I read somewhere that you can remove the clamp ring with a pair of pliers, and there was something called a “shark bite” fitting that would go on without tools. Score!
I ordered two of these “shark bite” taps – actually these ones are called “press to fit” because “Shark Bite” is a trademark. These ones are pretty big compared to the other ones I already had. And after spending a couple of hours on my back under the trailer, I discovered that you can’t remove the clamp ring with just a pair of pliers, but a pair of diagonal cutters might do it. So off to the hardware store and got a pair of “dykes”.
With the dykes, I was able to get the ring off, but the adaptor wouldn’t come out of the pipe. So I went home for the day to have a think.
The next day I set off to the hardware store, only to find a gigantic hole in my tire, but that’s a story for another time. So the day after that, with new tires on my truck, I set off to the hardware store and bought a PEX cutter. I figured I’d cut off the pipe below the adaptor and put in the new tap. But at the store, I was having a sudden sense that I’d got the size of the PEX pipe wrong so my new taps wouldn’t work. So I also bought an adaptor that would let me use the tap from the first set if the PEX pipe ended up being 1/2” instead of 3/8”.
Back at the trailer, it turns out the second set of taps I bought fit fine, and so I didn’t need the adaptor. But after getting the one tap working, I didn’t see a reason to cut off the perfectly working first tap I put on, so I’ve got unmatched taps. And I’ve got the adaptor, and the cold tap from one set and the hot tap from another set rattling around in my truck. I wonder if having different taps is a faux pas?
