What a dramatic title! First, a backstory. In our basement we had a water softener that was unused, old, and in the way of the electrical panel. We didn’t want the softener because we are on city water and it was unused and taking up space so I wanted to get rid of it. There really was no easy to get it out, one the thing was incredibly heavy. There was two parts, one the actual water tank, then this plastic container filled with about 300lbs of salt (I am not exaggerating here) for the tank, it cut it cut in our main water line, went through the tank, then back into the main supply. These were two parallel pipes about eight inches apart so I was going to have to get them back together using tees.
Ok so you might realize that I’m actually not talking about a real shark bite, but the shark bite plumbing product. These bad boys are awesome, they are easy to use, you just slip them right on! and if you mess up, they come off really easily with their release tool. First thing I did was cut off the water tank so I could actually get back there. Once I cut the water tank off I needed to connect the two pipes, both had existing tee’s that were in line so my initial idea was to cut those two out, get SharkBite slip tees and replace them. However, the first hiccup! The tees that I was replacing were about 3″ long, SharkBite slip tees require max of 2″ to join. Second issue was the main pipe was 1″ diameter rather than the 3/4″ of the slip tee…
For the 1″ pipe I had to get a 1″ to 3/4″ reducer tee and a 1″ coupling, I cut an 8″ piece that I used the coupling part and the reducer to roughly line up with the cut spot on the other pipe. Next was making the perpendicular pipe to connect the two, and then the trickiest part I thought, cutting the other pipe and aligning the tee and connecting so everything went together smoothly!
Here is a picture of the finished product.
All in all, it was a interesting project, and my first plumbing exposure! next up… theres a burst pipe in the garage where the water is currently off. Shouldn’t really be an issue with a SHARKBITE!