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On my 86 Granville when I installed a new toilet I have a kink in my water line connecting the toilet which slows the water flushing abilities.  Was thinking of cutting the water line (Gasp!) and shorting the line a little and reconnecting the line using some sort of sleeve and a couple of clamps. Would this work? Any idea of the diameter if the water line? Any ideas on how to properly cut the line! Thanks All!

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I don’t know! I don’t think I have pex lines just a hard plastic line that doesn’t flex much. I don’t know the internal diameter of this line. Any ideas?

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Heater hose? That might be perfect!  Do you know the diameter of the water lines in these old rigs before I go to HD? Thanks!

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Most residential plumbing uses 3/8 ID supply line to the toilet and some older mobile homes use 3/8 OD supply lines. 

Best to measure the outside diameter of your supply line the get a short section of fuel hose with the same inside diameter as your outside supply. Cut/splice and two clamps you should be good to go. 

Edited by fred heath
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39 minutes ago, fred heath said:

Most residential plumbing uses 3/8 ID supply line to the toilet and some older mobile homes use 3/8 OD supply lines. 

Best to measure the outside diameter of your supply line the get a short section of fuel hose with the same inside diameter as your outside supply. Cut/splice and two clamps you should be good to go. 

I've used a similar method  in my Dolphin to convert the grey plastic pipe (I believe it is polybutylene pipe) to standard size threaded pipe so I could connect new kitchen sink and bathroom faucets using standard home-size no-burst braided hose lines that then screw easily onto the faucets' connection points. I used standard garden hose, which fit snugly onto the grey pipe, then a galvanize threaded pipe nipple which fit inside the other end of the piece of garden hose. Then I connected the standard no-burst connection lines to the threaded galvanized pipe. Where the galvanized nipple goes into the garden hose, one clamp was fine because the threads on the galvanized pipe provide a good grip to the garden hose. But one hose clamp didn't do the trick where the garden hose connected to the grey pipe. You can't tighten the hose clamp enough to make a solid connection because the grey pipe begins to become malformed and the water pressure then pushes the pipe out of the garden hose. What I found that worked was to rough up the surface of the grey pipe with a few shallow jagged slices all the way around the grey pipe to provide some grip with the garden hose. Then I used three hose clamps at each connection point. Two might do it, but I didn't want to take any chances. This has held just fine for us. We can now connect standard fixtures to the lines in the Dolphin. No muss, no fuss.

Sharkbite does make an adaptor fitting that fits the polybutylene pipe and adapts it to regular pex plastic tubing. I didn't find out about this fitting until after the fact. I made my jerry-rig modification the first time while on the road, using whatever odds and ends I could find in the small town where I was at the time, to replace a leaky faucet connection. But I used my jerry-rig method anyway on all the other lines, including the line to the toilet, even once I had access to the Shark fitting because I found that by the time I used the Sharkbite fitting, then added a piece of pex, then added the adaptor I needed to add a threaded connection to the pex tubing in order to accommodate the no-burst hose, I had more joints than just using the garden hose/galvanized nipple method. It's not pretty, but it does the trick, and it's cheap, too! A real plumber would scoff at me, I'm sure. But I'm more of a function-over-form kind of guy. If it works, I don't care how mickey mouse it looks.

That polybuthlene pipe which most of our toy homes use is notoriously unreliable, particularly the fittings. The pipe itself is less suspect. Back in the 80's (or thereabouts)  polybutylene was used in home plumbing and mobile homes. But there was a class action lawsuit at one point because of failure of the fittings used to connect the pipe. A bunch of people had flooded homes and a bunch of lawyers made a bundle of money.

Good luck. Remember, if it works, it works. Just don't look at it!

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Thanks Gents! Great ideas!

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  • 2 months later...

Not sure if anyone can give me a hand...I need to reconnect the plumbing under the kitchen sink. The old connectors were leaking like crazy. Went to HD thinking I had the pieces I needed to replace in my purse only to discover they got left behind.?So, as I had taken photos, I was able to show one of the employees what I needed to replace. He found me what I also thought would do the job. I needed to cut part of one pipe off and  use a new attachment to the sink. Problem is it does not fit my pipes. It is the grey plastic pipe, which I thought was PVC.  I've since figured it is the old outdated polybutylene. It doesn't fit the new adapter which is 1/2" x 1/2". Can anyone tell me what size adapter I need and what company makes them?? Thanks!

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if it looks like the attached image its ABS, not PVC. Plumbing is changed over often so yours could be PVC. The wall pipe to vent should still be 1-1/2" or something but more often than not the sink connections are a size smaller with a 1-1/2 to whatever the smallersize is (say 1-3/8" or 1-1/4") adapter being at the trap. This is due to Non standard size of the drain in the rv sinks.

You should be able to take off the trap easily and take it to your store to verify exact dimensions.

edit -- If its just leaks , you might want to consider leakproofing with appropriate plastic adhesive -- as long as you are happy cutting the next time instead of unscrewing.

edit -- it looks like you are talking about water supply lines and not sink drain. plumbing is the abs. the gray water supply lines go two sizes too. 1/2" and 3/8".  both are often extensively customized by now due to the issues you are facing now. They make relatively cheap nylon adapters for supply lines that can typically hold for a while with good clamping.

 

edit : google 3/8" and 3/8" x 1/2" barb fittings to match the fitting you have now. They come in both nylon and metal (copper?). You probably need a 3/8" barb to 1/2".

20180708_220718.jpg

Edited by neubie
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The shark bite type of fitting WRE posted work fine on both pex and polybutylene either in plastic or copper.

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Thanks for the help! I managed to get what I needed at a funky little hardware store here in Tacoma. They are the shark bite adapters that go from the old 3/8 inch poly to the new 1/2 inch pex. The guy there helped me piece together just what I needed and it all works perfectly now!!

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