[Tim W[_2_]]

Was plumbing the bathroom at the bungalow last night.

A real 3am job! Partly because I'm still masochistic enough to use copper
and a bending machine - 3 hours to get the bath tap tails right and fitted.
However it does look very neat.

And one thing about copper - I had zero leaks on my soldered, compression
and BSP joints. Very pleasing


Except 2. Due to lack of central heating (major project, later like...) I
wopped in a Hyco 9.5kW multipoint heater.

This thing has plastic male 1/2" BSP threads, apparently parallel.
Destructions say use PTFE. *If* the silly thing had another 1/4" length on
the threads, it would have bottomed out on my female fitting and a washer
would have sealed it nicely. But it didn't and the instructions were clear
about the PTFE.

Unless this is one of those cases where a female taper is used (they're not
the easiest thing to get hold of)... Anyway, I got one to seal with 2 turns
of gas grade PTFE.

The other refused to stop weeping, even with 2.5 turns and 3 turns would
have prevented the thread doing up at all, I tried!

Anyway, gave up in disgust and wacked some Rocol Threadseal XS[1] on which
worked, even though I'm not entirely sure if you *should* use that with
plastic or not. I contemplated Virgin White and PTFE string, but the lack
of the words "WRAS" or "potable" stopped me.

[1] It's bloody marvellous on brass-brass BSP - used some for the
over-pressure drain valve.

Was I being a numpty or are plastic threads crap?

Cheers

Tim

PS

Despite being a weedy 9.5kW interim solution and despite being a crap cheap
heater with no modulation of power like the fancy ones, the Hyco works
really well. I put adjustable flow restrictors on the bath and sink tails -
the ones with a ball valve and a chageable flow cartridge. Set the bath for
4 l/min on hot and that sets the HW temp to about 45 degrees. Yes it takes
1/2 hour to fill a bath, but it works.

--
Tim Watts

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