Pro-Press

[Archerysniper]

The topic has come up many times of diffrent types of water lines this is just one of the many.

Propress has been on the market for awhile now and im seeing more everyday it has it's place but alot of jobs are writing it into their specs for the whole building water and heating system. I have also noticed more failure of the fittings could be brand new or installed weeks or months earlier.

This is just one example today I got a emergency call to go to a job that we had just turned over to the owner for a leak on the water main on second floor. The leak was on a 2-1/2x2-1/2x2" copper tee it had been installed a year ago and passed the air test of 100 lbs and the water had been on to the building for 3 months. I cut the fitting out expecting to find that it was not seated fully into the fitting or not properly crimped. I found that it was completly seated the pipe was cut square and was crimped properly, no reason I could see for it to leak.

I made my repairs also with propress because that is spec for the job site, and installed slip couplings so I could get it all back together and turned the water back on and guess what the new coupling I put in now leaks by this time it's 6:30 and nowhere to get parts, wish i could have just soldered it.

Here are some pic's of the fittings and tool so if you run into.

This is what the fittings look like.

This is the O-ring that makes the seal inside the fitting.

This is the one I cut out that was leaking the arrow is pointing to the leak.

And this is what the tool itself looks like the main tool will do up to 2 inch and then the other kit will do 2-1/2" to 4".

[bgmny]

Archery, I see you got the right parts for the job, but the one thing I've noticed about the pro press is the gun. I ran a job where we did a new installation, and on some 3/4" we had a bunch of leaks and could not figure out why. What we figured out is that the gun itself. It needs to be warm. The battery on the Ridgid gun might say it's good but then you press it and you have a problem. I've found several times that the gun and battery both need to be warm or they will not press right. I know there is no where in the instructions that say this but is something i've found and will never press a joint with a cold gun again. When you are doing joints over 2" there is extra strain on the gun and it gets even worse than small stuff. The newer lithium batteries are worse than the old batteries when it's cold. I'd bet you took the gun out of a cold truck and everything looked good, but the gun was cold and didn't make a good press. Just something i've seen and thought i'd pass it on.

[Ringtailhunter]

The one thing that I always think about when I run into in these things is that perhaps the initial cut of the copper may have been done with a cutter with a dull wheel. When the wheel is dull it pushes up a significant ridge that may be affecting the O ring some how when the pipe is jammed in. It could also be a bad scratched end of pipe that was missed. As far as the tool being too cold I don't see any connection, that particular tool wont work at all if too cold due to the factory lock out on it, also if it cannot get 100% press it immediately backs off. It is alway easier to blame the tool,or materials but most of the time something is just over looked. When you are putting on fitting after fitting all day long things get missed depending on your work environment.

Dictate