I've been doing a little bit of MDPE plumbing just recently and it's
not going well.

Previously I've not had big problems with getting watertight and long
term reliable connections. I have quite a lot of MDPE buried across
our fields feeding two horse waterers and a couple of taps for
greenhouses etc. All fairly straightforward and reliable.

Now I am trying to tee off an existing feed (quite recently installed
by a builder) to an outside tap to provide a feed for our chcickens.
We only have 9 chickens but daily checking the water is a chore. We
moved them recently and they used to have an automatic waterer and we
want it back!

So I've added a tee to the existing blue pipe, run a pipe across a
path, put a stop tap in and then it runs to the chickens.

One tee, two elbows and an in-line tap, simple - no.

Various problems:-

I bought some floplast inserts from Screwfix, they are too tight
in the MDPE I have, you can't push them in by hand and so when
they need to go somewhere a bit inaccessible they are a complete
pain. The older (white rather than black) inserts I have go in
much more easily. I've ordered some more, not Floplast, inserts

The in-line tap I have is almost impossible to install on pipes
with Floplast inserts (at least I think this is the problem). The
plastic rings that push against the sealing rings expand such that
the retaining nuts can't be screwed onto the body of the tap. A
bit more thread on the tap body would make things much easier.

Pushing the MDPE pipe into the standard O-ring sealed fittings
seems more difficult than it should be, I've not found it so
difficult before, am I getting feebler (probably) or is there
something I can do to make it easier?


I guess it's mostly down to less accessibility than I've had on
previous occasions, slightly too big Floplast inserts and a mixture of
brands of fittings.

Any advice or comiserations would be very welcome! :-)

--
Chris Green
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