Do you use the pipe cleaner before dry fitting. It seems to me the cleaning takes the really smooth finish off and that would make for a tighter dry fit.. I am guessing the glue may add a little to the length and doesen't compress at the ends and so the amount of excess glue may be a variable. I might suggest glueing the tight joints first leaving pipes long so hopefully just one final just right measurement needs to be made. Ron ----- Original Message ----- From: Edward Przybylek To: BlindHandyMan Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2007 11:33 PM Subject: [BlindHandyMan] Follow-up To PVC Question For The Experts
Hi all, Thanks to everyone for their help on my PVC question. I got a lot of useful information from the various replies. I'm afraid, though, that I might not have made myself very clear. Whenever I do a job using PVC, the first thing I do is measure everything as carefully as I can and then I cut all my PVC pipe. I then sand down the edges of each pipe to help it slide into the appropriate fittings. Then I dry fit all the pipes and fittings together to make sure everything is correct. Here's where my problems begin. When dry fitting everything together, many of my pieces of pipe do not slide completely into the various fittings. The pipe will slide into a fitting about half way and then bind up. They bind up so tightly, sometimes, that I have a hell of a time pulling them apart. This being the case, when looking at a project that has just been dry fitted, it looks like many of my pieces of pipe are a little too long. This is because the pieces have not completely slid into the fittings at each end of the pipe. Once glue is applied to the pieces of pipe, however, the pipe has no trouble sliding completely into the fitting, almost as if it were lubricated. That's why I asked if there was some acceptable amount one could subtract from each pipe measurement that would allow the pipes to dry fit better to give a better representation of what the final project would look like. This can't be too much of a fudge factor because the pipe lengths in the final result might appear to be a bit short. Possibly, I'm asking the wrong question. Probably what I should be asking is if there is something that I can do to get my PVC pipe pieces to slide completely into the various fittings during the dry fit step so that I get a very accurate representation of what my project will look like once it's flued together. If this is still clear as mud, please ask any questions you might have. I'm sure, once I get over this hurdle, my plumbing projects will improve a great deal. Again, any help greatly appreciated. Take care, Ed [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
