Shoutout to the guy in Phoenix who showed me the compression fitting trick

I used to solder every single copper drop I ran, and last month I got put on a 40 unit apartment complex where that method would have kept me there forever. A guy named Dale on my crew showed me how to do compression fittings on the interior runs instead, and I knocked out 9 units in one day versus the 3 or 4 I was doing with solder. The downside is some old timers won't touch them and say they leak after five or six winters, but Dale swears he has runs from 2019 still holding fine at 80 psi. So which side are you on, is solder the only way you trust behind a wall, or have the fittings gotten good enough now that it does not matter?

1 comments

Log in to join the discussion

Log In

1 Comment

tara_mitchell13d ago

Man, I feel you on the soldering grind. I got stuck doing a 60 unit job back in 2021 and I was torching every joint like an idiot for the first two weeks before a guy on my crew showed me the same thing. Went from 3 units a day to knocking out 8 or 9 once I switched over, and my knees thanked me for not squatting under sinks all day. I get why the old timers are nervous though, my uncle swears compression fittings are gonna blow out someday and calls them landlord specials. But I have seen Dale's kind of setup hold up too, and if it is behind drywall and not a closed crawl space, I will take the speed every time.

7