Do O-Rings Really Leak Over Time? Testing PROPRESS 

what would happen is you re-press the fiting again after it leaks??

Heh. Same folks who insist that cordless tools are a fad. "You'll have to pry my Mag 77 worm drive out of my cold, dead hands!"

​@@SplashJohnwe live in a temporary society. Old tools last forever, new tools last a few years.

I DO HVAC AND WAGO IS THE WAY TO GO, DOING CONTROL WIRING SO MANY TIMES I WOULD HAVE ONE LOOSE WIRE IN NUT, NOT NO MORE. PLUS, IT IS JUST A CLEANER JOB

I've had several WAGO's that failed due to user error I guess. When the wire appears to be in, all the way, I've has them loose connectivity. After a few customer complaints (sometimes they have to loosen the connection an reasseble because of a specific installation) and one Customer who's wago nearly melted; I bailed on them altogether. To much at stake for the saings over a traditional din rail mounted distrobution block method.

I'm rerouting wiring in a 50 year old house. Back then they mostly used crimps; and they are NOT coming apart. Even in places where they did use wire nuts, they are still staying put. I do run into problems with WAGO when the wires are pushed back in the box, and the lever got hung up on something, and the lever got flipped. I use WAGO where I anticipate changes. And in places like in the ceiling, where the wiring is permanent, I trust wire nuts more. Also in high current, I use wire nut. When I use WAGO, i tape the levers down.

That's a good idea, I am still in shock of these results. I will have to work on a followup with some endurance tests.

My guess is beating a soldered pipe will eventually cause leaks. Fortunately, most of us don’t have to worry about bars to our pipes in the walls.

@@tb2324 no, but sometimes pipes in walls move and bang around due to the water pressure. That can be a problem 5 years later. Still impressive though

@@SilverCymbal Water hammer pushes and pulls the pipe, gravity twists joints in some installations. Fun experiment but the o-ring is still necessary and is still the point of failure. Chlorinated (or worse chlorinated with fluoridic acid) water destroys o-rings in a few years in some parts of the country.

I just watched video and came to comments to ask the same thing. Beat on it with the O-Rings installed.

Expansion should be little concern as long as all components are the same material. Yes one end will warm and cool slightly faster and copper has a high expansion rate but my non-expert opinion would be not enough to have an effect. I'm not a plumber but i am a machinist so metal is my life. During machining processes i deal with heat all the time and sometimes use it to my advantage.

@@95dodgev10 I've had threaded connections have no leaks until they were heated with hot water.

It’s still crimped together. Meaning some of the copper was removed from the fitting during the press. It is smushed together much like a compression fittings’ ferrule is mashed into the pipe. Expansion from temperature isn’t going to separate the fitting from the pipe is literally smashed together like gum. The goal with plumbing is to make the pipe and fitting as one singular piece as possible. Just like PVC, it’s not glued into the joint it is a chemical weld that bonds the two pieces together into one piece. Or else all of the fittings will leak. The goal is to make the spaces close enough that water can’t slip through or to bond it into one piece

I mean heck on water HEATERS we thread brass female adapters onto the MIP threads coming off of the water heater. And it cools and heats. No leaks

@@drooplug Nice thought. Yeah I would like to see this test redone with HOT water, COLD water cycling and longevity test. Just because something works nice now does not mean it will work like that in the long term.

Thanks, I've been thinking about adding a press tool, and will definitely consider that down side.

@@williardbillmore5713 It is about getting more done and working smarter. Are you really telling us that soldering a whole complex is faster than prepressing it. You can wrap up jobs a ton faster and move on to the next one and most cases if a leak happens and you followed everything, you can pin on the manufacturer. Not going to work with Soldering. I do however believe Soldering is an art and maybe people do it wrong or partially right. I have seen so many plumbers skip steps such as deburring, cleaning, wiping flux because they just want to move to the next thing

@@williardbillmore5713pro press is the new standard you geezer

​@@williardbillmore5713 propress has been around for decades. It's not new. It's been used in Europe since the 80s and the USA since the 90s. Propress is rated for 50 years while sweating copper is rated from 5-60 years. The huge change comes from the fact you are using Flux. Flux eats away at the material. You can clean the outside of the pipe (which i usually find green from previous plumbers) but you can't clean the interior of the pipe & fittings. Furthermore, the o-ring in press & push to fit, are under pressure but not under running water, as the ring is between the pipe and fitting. It is not like a seal in a moving/working part like faucets. The ring is compressed and flattened around the pipe and only a small portion of it is actually wet. Nearly 80% of the ring never gets water. For it to degrade, it would have to eat thru the entire ring, including the parts that have never touched water. Simply put, you are talking down a system you know little about. I find many plumbers do the same for everything. Go back a few decades and you'll find plumbers talking bad about copper, only trusting galvanized pipe.

@@williardbillmore5713maybe if you’re too lazy to watch this very video that proves you wrong, you shouldn’t be a plumber

Buddy, change the pipes. It always amazes me to see such intelligent people in other fields say such incredibly silly things about construction. I can guarantee you that o-ring is not holding pressure. If you see a pressurized line start to fail, Stop using it and change it. Obviously propressed isn't the right choice in your situation.

Pro press is not meant for vacuum or valves that are going to be used on and off constantly also pro press holds air and gases just like water because they are both fluids but that being said not all fluids can be held by pro press once again the right tool for the right application and I say this with 25 years of experience in working on vacuum systems and freeze dryers and many other types of systems from steam to chiller.

A properly made solder joint is always going to be better than a propress joint. The problem is that a properly made solder joint isn't that easy to make and people like to cut corners. First you have to cut and deburr the pipe. You have to clean both the pipe and the fitting well. You have to apply solder and correctly heat the fitting enough to allow the full length of the joint to wick the solder in, but not too much heat as to burn off your solder. Then applying too much solder will create little globs of solder in your pipe causing weird water turbulence reducing flow and causing pinhole leaks down the line. Oh and you have to flush the system after soldering with flux and hot work permits are required for commercial projects. Now... once we get into some of the bigger 2" and bigger pipes that many of the properties that I work with use and you realize that getting a good solder joint on a 3" copper pipe is an absolute nightmare where you're heating the joint with two or sometimes three torches and have two people working on one joint to get enough heat in the pipe to melt the fitting and you see how a megapress tool just starts to be a necessity. Add in the fact that propress is quicker and better for service work because it doesn't require the water to stop dripping and any idiot can do it and do it well and I prefer to spec work be done in propress when I'm asking contractors to spec out work for me. I do property management and have seen a hundreds of solder joints fail and I've never seen a propress joint have any issues.

@@dudas91 yeah I think this is good summary that highlights benefits of press fittings. soldering has it's place in my opinion, but when factoring in all the variables press fittings really tend to be the best fit for a majority of applications these days.

@@dudas91 Well said sir!! You have me wanting to go become a licensed plumber. 🤣🤣🤣

@@dudas91 This is where so many pointless arguments stem from - something being better in theory vs being better in practice.

Imma just say pro press is fine but solder and braze with

Long term No Bueno

I would say the temperature change inside of most houses is like 4 to 6 degrees over the entire year

@@blackwall619 I mean it’s been the standard in Europe for the last 30 years and there haven’t been many issues with it so

@@blackwall619 Always great to be taught by people from countries with lower quality construction standards (be it infrastructure or house building) on how things are done properly. (Attention, that's sarcasm). Greetings from Germany :D

I wish! I have a long way to go for that. He's amazing!

You pretty good yourself!

I was just thinking this exact same thing

Agree

I was going to ask this question too. It would presumably take a long time to test.

They are same metal so the will Heat and contract at the same rate. I don't see a reason how they will fail.

The metal to metal connection won't hold up. You definitely need the rubber O-ring.

Business has us coming and going. .....oh demand is low so prices are up.... oh demand is high so prices are high..

50 year warranty from manufacturers defects with Viega propress. What's the warranty on a solder fitting?

Most plumbing stores rent the tool. I literally have a rented one in the truck right now for a repipe I'm finishing tomorrow.

Soldered joint wouldn't leak.

Heating contractors use it like crazy, it seems like every one does for the speed and considering most heating systems are removed within 30 years, there isn't any concern about potential failures, though these are designed to last for 50 years + But some plumbers use them but still not super common. Viega needs to release their patent and focus on the fitings, the tool prices ruins this for most people.

They dont follow the same principle, swaging is completely different to just compressing metal on metal. Swaging cuts into the metal to produce a seal, thats what they do to copper pipes when they run gas through them.

The manual press is amzn.to/3qbPCI4 not bad. The power tool is $2k but if you have a plumber install two valves in yoru house nowadays you might spend 1/2 that. So one trick is if you have LOT to do, buy the power tool, use it for the job, sell it later and you will get back 80% of what you paid. They are very desirable used.

Time savings equal labor savings, and no one thinks about the cost of consumables, solder, flux, gas, etc etc. A press tool now gets over 100,000 presses before needing to be adjusted, no matter if it is pressing 1/2" or 4". How much solder would you have to buy, or brazing rods, for 100,000 4" presses?????

@@robpendola5888the answer 100,000 4” couplings is 400,000 inches of solder. Theres 27 feet in a roll of solder approximately so just over 33,000 rolls of solder for 100,000 4” soldered couplings. Just an fyi nobody solders that much 4”. A better comparison is to take an average pipe size which is 3/4” and use that. Which would be 75,000 inches of solder at 27 feet per roll equals just over 231 rolls of solder at an average of 30 bucks a roll… that prices you out at about 6,900 bucks. But heres the kicker…. You would have to solder like 40,000 joints before the tool paid for itself. The average on call repair plumber does a hand full of joints on average a day at best. But lets say 4 a day on average. So 20 joints a weeks on average which is 1,000 joints a year… which would mean it would take 40 years for the tool to pay itself off. Where the tool makes sense is in large scale new construction with inexperienced staff. For the average plumber it doesnt really pay to invest in propress unless its something you really want and you can charge the extra costs in your area to make back the cost of the tool. Just sayin.

@@robpendola5888you could do 90 to 120 freeze break repairs on one roll of solder approximately. I mean if im crunching numbers…. I would say that a freeze break repair uses at cost 5 to 7 dollars worth of materials. Thats the cost of propress coupling… so both soldering and propress both price out for the customer right about the same with it being only maybe a couple bucks more for propress. Easier and cheaper to buy solder cup fitting in bulk and stock on the truck though, just my opinion.

@@-Nobody-1it saves time, and when you work for a company that provides the ProPress tool it helps both the company and me. It saves my time as a plumbing service tech, you can’t sweat joints as fast as just inserting copper into the fitting and pressing it. I did a job at a propane company, they had a pinhole in their water main. I just killed the breaker for the well pump drained down the pressure tank, cut a section out and pressed together a new section. No hot work permits, no pretending to pay attention to the safety guy ramble on for 15 minutes about the dangers of fire before I can even grab my torch out of the van even though they had a gas fired hot water and guys were smoking outside the front office that is 100 feet from the giant tanks. it was a propane company so they had a safety guy on site. Every tool I used he wanted to go over a safety list or some shit. If I even mentioned anything about a torch I’d be there all day

I live in Germany and most of the buildings at my workplace use Viega Propress for water and heating for at least 10 years. We even have them in rooms that are full with servers and ISP network gear and I haven't heard of any water leakage since I started working here in 2010.

@@Jonkree awesome! Thank you!

got mega press for black iron or grazine pipe, for hvac have different company make those

ZoomLock!!!

Look it up

fuel gas, and many other gases Viega has IPS MegaPress fittings

Here in California propress is 4x more expensive than regular solder fittings

The tool can be rented.

Exactly! Although soo many are looking for a quick fix, a no-brainer, a no-experience required tool, or are just lazy! When I was young I was taught that all rubber will degrade and now as an adult working as a maintenance technician I can tell you that all rubber seals will fail and with plumbing a connection that is meant to be leak free "forever", not just 5-20 years then why take risks? For a homeowner I think it's ok to take a shortcut such as pro-press or sharkbite. But any professional should be thinking of longevity not look smart by completing a job crazy quick. I wonder how many plumbers out there mainly use compression fittings and have anxiety of when they all start to fail! lol For anyone looking for a quick plumbing method should use Pex pipe which is plastic not rubber and has no rubber seals.

@@mrdan2898 Idk why americans dont seem to use them but Ermeto fittings for copper is the much better alternative, I personally dont like PEX because the water quality degrade over time because it doesnt cleanse waterpipe like copper does. I lived in an apartment that used PEX and by the time I moved out the water quality was shit.

@@spoofer20 Funny that you mentioned the Ermeto compression fittings. Just yesterday I was thinking that they would be a great choice over sharkbite. I have used these compression fittings on certain situations and rarely run into issues. There's also no rubber seal that can fail, thus as long as they are installed correctly there is little chance of future failure. My workplace uses heavy cleaning chemicals that will degrade rubber seals or non-stainless connections. I aim for stainless connections and then I'm worry free.

wtf yes it is needed!

It most certainly IS needed unless you want your piping to look like a lawn sprinkler either immediately or after a short time.

@@nheng6913 Did you watch the video?

@@RobotMowerTricks It is needed because crimping will only hold the two metal pieces together until it experiences temperature changes over time, metal moves and with movement the crimping wont stick. Crimping wont fuse the metals together. I work at a production facility and we crimp all kinds of stuff and if we just crimped metal on metal it will leak 100% over time even at very low pressures.

It is needed, the video just proves the fittings are really extremely tight when pressed.

Straight white vinegar

That is a good question, I need to put this as a follow up test

At that point you defeated the whole purpose of these fittings (faster, no flame required, no need for pipes to be dry) so you may as well skip the expensive crimper tool and use the much cheaper fittings that are made to be soldered. Also, solder wouldn't correctly penetrate this joint as tight as it is. If it's sealed well enough to contain pressurized water, there's no way solder would get through it. Just crushing a regular fitting enough to keep it in place while you solder it can cause the solder to not seal properly.

​@@averyalexander2303I think that was exactly his point

Bahahaha. They are only getting more expensive.

Agree.

Viega Propress is good up to 300 PSI operating pressure

Then you aren't sanding the pipe well enough and are cutting or dislodging the ring. The fittings do not leak if installed correctly.

Yes, it would be nice to see the test repeated at 300 PSI, with and without O-rings. Of course, water hammer can cause properly soldered joints to fail also.

gadeteez. I am genuinely interested in your comment. Is it the velocity of the water that causes the pressure surge. I think a water pressure of 100 psi that can produce three times that by shutting off the valve is always going to be at risk regardless of the fittings. I would fit a shock arrestor in such a system.