Our local RV shop is full of great stuff...just recently we wanted to update our faucets in the b-room - new RV to us and 14-yearold fittings looked dingy and old...he suggested we use a 'brass' faucet in the shower vs. the plastic one my girl-friend had in her hand...installed it with a lot of grief - small area to work in behind the shower and had all sorts of problems getting the female fitting to go onto the faucet ends (Hot/Cold) - obviously because it was not the correct thing to do but we didn't know that yet...
Took the day off work along w/my girl and we headed out to camp...got set...had dinner, watched TV and went to sleep...next morning up, relaxing and my lady took a shower...all's good till we're sitting at the dinette chatting and we hear - pssssssssssssssssst....and water shooting all over but not at us - in the flipping wall...
Quickly, realizing there's no way to shut off water in the coach and thinking "I know what just happened" (eg - the faucet connection(s) failed) I head to the post and shut off the shore-water feed...noticing water running out of the side of the motor-home at the wheel-well...not fun...
...so sure enough it was the cold-water feed to the faucet that let loose so we spent a few hours attempting in that cramped, tight area to get the fitting to re-seat onto the faucet to no avail...so no water...no reason to stay camping...and we reluctantly and finally decided to head home since we were dead in the water...or without water...pun intended...
So the water pipes are this stiff gray tubing with no flex, no extra length and in a tight spot in the wall behind the shower, and the compression fitting is all screwed up cause we inappropriately tried to screw it (plastic) to the metal one, obviously at this point realizing we messed up the threads and we read after the fact that you should never use plastic fittings to metal (female/plastic - to male/metal)...so what can we do...
I have this great (yeah right) idea to hit Home-Depot and see if we can add a compression fitting once removing the one...knowing that doing that would make the non-flexible, hard-to-reach pipe that much more 'hard to reach' - but what do you do?
We hit Home-Depot and after finding with the help of one of the senior employees, compression fittings (brass) and he spent quite a bit of time trying to understand what I wanted to do...I said - remove the current right angle fitting, and add a compression fitting and come off of it with a flexiple pipe so I can finally hook up a faucet...
It took him a bit to understand as we examined options, but finally he showed us Shark-Bite fittings and I was like - This is perfect...we found the metal flexible pipes and a 1/2" shark-bite fitting with a pipe thread on the other end, and wall-ah...we're on the mark to get it fixed...
So I won't belabor that long story but it really did help tremendously - even though the fitting was a bit difficult to get into the tight opening behind the shower, after finagleing and cutting the existing tubing compression fitting off as square as I could on the tube (took a couple iterations to get it smooth and somewhat square) I slipped the Shark-Bite fitting on snuggly, attached the flexible metal tube to it and then to the faucet, energized the water pressure, and all was good - no leaks, etc...
Finally remounted the faucet and our weekend, Labor-day holiday camping experience is done...we didn't get to camp but learned alot about fittings, plumbing in the RV, and a 'new' to us anyway method of working with it easier than we could with our limited skills on this...
So if you need help with your plumbing and are not a plumber, I suggest these fittings...they're more money but well worth it...hopefully the end of this saga on the b-room and shower...onto learning additional stuff as it comes our way...
Plumbing problems solved - thank God for Shark Bites!
Gotta say I've only felt a few earthquakes.. and then very minor.
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