So our shower had been leaking for a while. I replaced o-rings a handful of times and that would work for a little while but I finally had enough screwing around and decided to change out the valve and everything. I contacted 1QIKZ about ordering a new valve for me, but as it turns out, Moen was about 3 weeks delivery time from the factory. I checked Amazon and for around the same price had everything in 5 days. I had a few ProPress fittings left over from a job I did like 5 years ago so I figured I would just use them up. I rented a ProPress gun for $50 which seemed cheaper than paying someone to sweat the new valve in. Here is what I started with and what the final product looks like. I am happy, and more importantly, the wife is happy.
+1… I taught myself after years of thinking it was some sort of voodoo. The big thing is making sure the pipes are 100% dry since any water will turn to steam and make it impossible to solder and that they joints are really clean and properly fluxed. Once you do that it takes surprisingly little heat and very little time to build a copper system that can easily be taken back apart for future repairs.
I don’t trust the crimp stuff after witnessing a couple dozen of them fail in a brand new laboratory building. it could have been installer error or just a bad batch of fittings but in either case it cost the plumbing contractor a pretty penny to cover the remediation.
Had a brief fix in our basement and used Gator/shark bites… those things are MIRACLES!!! Saved me a lot of time… especially for a quick fix. I did however like the “crimp-thing,” but me personally would much rather sweat the pipes in… especially behind drywall.
