deano wrote:
I am fitting a thermostatic shower valve into a stud wall.
The feed pipes will be surface mounted on the other side of this wall
(as they will be hidden at the back of a cupboard).
I got a couple of male 90° 22-15mm compression couplings to fit onto
the end of the pipes and up into the valve hot and cold inlets. This
way the pipes can go straight through the wall at a right angle.
When fitting the 90° couplings to the valve, how do I make them both
point in the correct direction (i.e. at right angles to the wall, so
they meet up with the feed pipes) when they are fully tightened?
Hmmm, do you actually mean you have compression fittings (i.e. ones that
use an olive and a back nut to tighten)?
When dry fitting to near maximum tightness, they end up pointing in
completely different directions, neither of which is 90° to the valve
body!
I susspect that one end of your fitting may have a BSP parallel thread
connector and not a compression connection. If this is the case they
will simply screw into a socket and not have any nut to tighten as such.
Do I cut then ends so that they point where they should when they
"ground out"?
No there is not usually any need to go cutting threads (unless they are
too long for some other reason). What you need is PTFE tape and lots of
it. Threaded connections don't have any way of making a water tight seal
by themselves (unlike compression fittings). So you wind many turns of
PTFE tape round the threaded bit and then screw it in (it will be much
stiffer to do up). This will make a water tight connection by itself, so
all you need do is stop turning when the connection is mostly screwed
home, pointing in the right direction, and *not* bottomed out in the
fitting.
--
Cheers,
John.
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