So I had to do a plumbing job at my house where I needed to run pipe from my basement to a crawlspace that would not accommodate 10 foot lengths of copper, and I didn’t want to cut a 4 foot length feed it down the hole then solder another 4 foot length, that would take forever. So it was time to try pex.
Pex is basically a really big hula hoop that isn’t in a loop. And you run water through it.
It’s flexible and can go places copper can’t.
It’s got lots of downsides, but for small things it’s handy.
But that’s not where the magic is. The sharkbite connector thing is the magic. A copper fitting elbow or straight connector costs like 30 cents or something like that, whereas a sharkbite connector costs $7. Interestingly the elbows cost $7, the straight connectors cost $9. You are penalized for being cheap and not buying a longer piece of pex.
But it works. It really does. No solder, no torches, no worrying about catching the insulation on fire. You just snap it together and you’re done. Takes less than a minute. You spend all your time hanging the pex, but the connection itself is trivial.
The best part is that these connectors work on pex and copper so you can make a junction between old and new plumbing with these things.
And if you weren’t convinced by me saying nice things (which I never ever do) go look on all the plumber’s boards and read about how they rag on it left and right. They’re angry and afraid, and they have every reason to be.
There will always be a need for plumbing and there will always be plumbers, but there’s no question sharkbite takes the bottom out from under plumbers for the easy work.
Plumbing is one of those technologies that hasn’t progressed in decades because everybody making money liked the status quo, but these silly little things are game changers for do it yourself work.
Any idiot can do plumbing with these. The only thing you can do wrong, is not push it on all the way. There’s nothing to screw up.