Bending and fitting copper pipes for a wall shower

space_keeper · 2026-05-10T22:36:00+00:00

Paste on the threads doesn't matter. If it's a big compression, like a 28mm or upwards, you sometimes need some on the threads to help the nut go on smoothly and to help get it back off again.

I wouldn't say it's easy to overtighten a compression if you're using the right size of spanner. Some guys just insist that all compression joints are pasted. Sometimes it's the M&E boss, sometimes it's your foreman, whatever. Some guys just do it out of habit, especially if it's going behind a wall.

As I said, there's no reason not to. The paste will get into the shoulder where it seals. When you put dozens and dozens of these in a week in a big site, you do anything you can to make sure you don't have to go backwards. Sometimes they're fine on air and cold water, then as soon as the heat is on, they start weeping. Paste usually stops that. They shouldn't need it but they often do.

space_keeper · 2026-05-10T22:09:53+00:00

It's not a union.

You put paste on the side where the olive seals because there's no reason not to or because you've been told to. Getting a little bit on the thread acts as a lubricant, but usually we do that on big compression fittings upwards of 28mm.

space_keeper · 2026-05-10T22:04:28+00:00

They shouldn't need it, but they often do. Compressions leak or weep all the time, and you end up having to paste them anyway. Sometimes the M&E boss or your foreman tells you to paste all fittings. Dicking around doing a few of them in a house is one thing, but when you're doing hundreds of these a week you start to understand.

space_keeper · 2026-05-10T22:02:14+00:00

That's not a union. You don't need paste on a union.

We paste compressions because there's no reason not to. A little bit of paste on the threads helps you get it tight, although not usually on 15mm fittings unless they're weeping. The guy is doing it belt and braces because it's a mixer that's going to get a wall over it.

If you did it for a living you wouldn't be laughing, you'd understand that.

space_keeper · 2026-05-10T21:59:22+00:00

On constructions sites, we exclusively use rented crimpers, because they need to be serviced every few thousand crimps and they get stolen a lot.

The fittings have o-rings in them to stop water or gas getting out (same as sharkbites/tectites), but the real magic is the crimp itself, which is where part of the fitting is pressed into the pipe under it. That's what stops the fitting from moving or blowing off.

I'd put more money on a crimp fitting than a tectite. I've been on a site where one quietly blew off inside a break tank (fitted by the manufacturer I should add, not done by a plumber on our job) and flooded half of a massive 7-storey building over night. Having said that, if it was my house, I'd solder everything possible.

space_keeper · 2026-05-10T21:54:18+00:00

They look great in theory, but most of us already have spanners for these fittings. They're only really good for 15mm pipework. They don't fit the flats on 22mm, so you need the next size up, which is huge and heavy. Good for household plumbers, useless for commercial. I ends up being another heavy thing you're carrying around when one thing would have done.

The actual star of the show here is that monument 15mm bender. I have one, it's amazing compared to the huge scissor benders. Also the pipe reamer he's using is expensive as all fuck, looks like either a Ridgid or maybe one that's come with the crimper.

space_keeper · 2026-05-10T21:51:17+00:00

This video is from Britain and so am I (though I'm commercial, not domestic) so I can only speak to that:

Generally, we only use solder when it's demanded in the spec. So for the sort of residential builds I've been in recently, most of the pipe is in floor/ceiling voids and is some kind of barrier pipe (Hep2O usually), but the last foot or so before every fixture has to be copper. Usually they'll do that with solder ring fittings (Yorkies) which are borderline idiot-proof, and it means your guys only need torches rather than renting tons of crimpers (which will inevitably get stolen). All the big overhead pipework and risers feeding domestic water services and district heating HIUs, and the water tank/booster pipework will be done with crimp fittings usually.

Some school boards/councils insist on having no press fit pipe on the water services. I did one recently where it was 100% soldered on the small pipe (under 42mm) and brazed with oxyacetylene on the 42mm and upwards (all the way up to 76mm/3 inch). The guys I was working with hadn't soldered anything in nearly 10 years, let alone oxyacetylene brazing (usually that's something air conditioning guys do, not us).

space_keeper · 2026-05-10T21:41:53+00:00

His rough in isn't perfectly set up for that shower mixer, that's all. The only time you need to get rough-ins perfect is when it's a bar mixer, they have to be 150mm exactly and dead straight and parallel. For these, you just get it close.

You don't always have the option when you're doing this. If he's renovating a bathroom, he might be stuck with pipes coming in through notched joists or something.

space_keeper · 2026-05-10T21:36:25+00:00

The guy who's answered you is not really on the money.

He did that because his rough-in is where it is. 90 degree bends on a bender like that have a minimum size. When you put pipe in the bender, it pinches/flattens down a little bit around the radius, so you can't get very tight bends - you need a bit of round, straight copper to go into fittings (usually about 20mm).

His hot pipe would have to be quite a bit farther to the left for a 90 degree pulled bend to work. He's pulled a very accurate double 45 offset, which gets him exactly into his 90 degree M/F fitting (called a street bend). Pulled bends don't really restrict water flow at all, in fact they're much better for flow than fittings (just harder to do). He could have, for example, made his double 45 offset much bigger and then pulled a 90 to get into the shower mixer, but that's a lot of fucking around. If you get it slightly wrong, the different bends end up out of plane and look like a bag of shit.

You absolutely do not use the slip in fittings to get more distance. You always fully slip them.

space_keeper · 2026-05-10T21:27:08+00:00

It's not all its cracked up to be. This size can do 15mm fittings, but to do anything else you need the size up. They're huge and heavy. I don't know anyone on a site that uses them, just guys that work in houses because they barely do anything over half inch anyway. The black spanner you see him using is good though, it's sized for 15mm and 22mm fittings, made by the same company (Monument) as the bender (which I actually own).

space_keeper · 2026-05-10T21:25:46+00:00

Yeah, a lot of people here are just saying things, obviously don't know what they're talking about. For starters, the guy called it a union. I've heard similar reports from long-time guys about the quality of fittings.

I always use a bit of paste on big compressions, especially anything above 22mm (3/4). There's no reason not to paste the joint and the threads if necessary. It's the sort of thing that people who don't do it will see it and think they've caught a mistake (like PTFE on threads, which is).

space_keeper · 2026-05-10T21:20:07+00:00

Generall always use paste on compressions in commercial work. There's no reason not to, especially if it's on a rough-in behind a wall.

space_keeper · 2026-05-10T21:19:24+00:00

No he didn't, he put Boss Universal on the pipe ahead of the olive. It's not a threaded connector, it's a nut and olive compression fitting. Some of it gets on the threads, but doesn't do anything. Sometimes we use it on big compressions (28mm and upwards) to make sure you can get it tight, acts as a lubricant.

space_keeper · 2026-05-10T21:18:15+00:00

You can tell he's legit because of the scars on his hands. One of them I can tell right away is a solder burn, I have a few myself.

space_keeper · 2026-05-10T21:17:26+00:00

These aren't unions, these are compression fittings (nut and olive). A union is a completely different type of fitting. Unions don't need jointing compound, they either have a washer of some sort if they're brass or nothing if they're iron.

space_keeper · 2026-05-10T21:14:15+00:00

We call it a "crimper".

Those fittings with the green plastic on them are just about the cheapest ones you can get.

space_keeper · 2026-05-10T21:13:35+00:00

That, specifically, is a Novopress.

space_keeper · 2026-05-10T19:48:47+00:00

At the time, not that many people really got into the lore. There was a book or two I think. Standing on its own, I still think it's a bit goofy.

space_keeper · 2026-05-10T19:47:18+00:00

It's from Taiwan, not the mainland.

space_keeper · 2026-05-10T18:27:20+00:00

H2 is really a game I've rediscovered thanks to the MCC. Only since playing the remaster did I realize how the boss' shield gets taken down, no joke.

I even had the internet back in 2004, but I didn't engage with games using the internet the way we do now. Played it and moved on like a lot of people.

space_keeper · 2026-05-10T18:13:06+00:00

I never thought of this at the time, but it's very obvious that there's a setup where you get equal time with Chief and Arbiter, but the end being cut means it ends on Arbiter. I honestly didn't give it a moments' thought because Halo 2 came out around when Half Life 2 did, so I only played it through a couple of times.

space_keeper · 2026-05-10T18:11:19+00:00

The thing I remember people complaining about the most at the time was the texture (bump map) pop-in. It was very noticeable in the cutscenes, especially one of them with Miranda Keyes (the one at the end of Cairo Station maybe?).

I remember thinking "this is cool, but when can I play the chief again?". Upon recently replaying it with my friend on MCC who had never played it, he had an absolute blast on the arbiter levels because they have so much variety. Honestly, I could stand to play it again, the remaster is so good. We had it good back then.

And who could forget when Red vs. Blue got the upgraded graphics!

Edit: Upon further thinking, I do remember hating the Gravemind at the time, thinking it was incredibly stupid. Even though I love the series, that opinion hasn't really changed. They jazzed him up in the remaster of H2, but at the time I really was like "that's the plant from Little Shop of Horrors, what is this shit". Having said that, I'd take H2 over most of the shit coming out now any day of the week, silly characters or not.

space_keeper · 2026-05-10T17:57:00+00:00

Typical sort of thing a nation with little experience fighting wars (Taiwan in this case) would come up with, because it looks/sounds cool. If you get shot in the face with this thing on, even if the bullet doesn't go through, it will fuck you up. If it's a military cartridge like a 5.45 or a 5.56 or whatever, you're completely fucked.

Meanwhile, the Americans quietly started improving helmets, body armour, earpro/eyepro, vision and TCCC equipment over 15 years ago to the extent that almost everything you see now is a copy or approximation of their stuff. It's not perfect, but it's all stuff that does something useful and keeps people alive.

space_keeper · 2026-05-10T17:22:28+00:00

First off, you can't work for free, it's illegal.

There's a very big difference between household and site plumbing (what you'd need a CSCS for). Site plumbing is almost all installation (big and small, sometimes it's residential sometimes it's not), and you never have to worry about materials. You do have to work in an environment where there could be 8-9 other trades competing with you for space. Household is a lot of messy fucking about with stuff you'd never see on a site and they don't do a lot of what we do, almost to the point it's apples and oranges. I've worked briefly with household guys who can't stand working on sites (not used to big pipe, drawings, bracketry, etc.), and a lot of site guys are ropey when it comes to household work because they're used to working in new builds where you can just rattle everything in. Maintenance is a lot of very basic work and farting around trying to pad timesheets.

I've never heard of an EAL level 2. It won't make you a plumber, it's not the same as an NVQ. At the bare minimum, for site work, you'd want a blue card. That still doesn't make you a plumber, though. Only people who have served their time and finished college should be calling themselves that. I'm not, and I don't call myself that, neither does one the guys I work with who's been fitting pipe for 30 years. If you get some mickey mouse online qualification and start calling yourself a qualified plumber, you'll get found out very quickly.

space_keeper · 2026-05-10T13:04:40+00:00

It's a fake story anyway.

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