welcome back to steve rob reviews today i'm going to review two pex plumbing
types of crimpers this one here and this one here now this one here it only does the half
inch and the three quarter inch pex rings this one does all the pex crimp rings and there's two
different styles i'm going to show you them both i'll show you the whole idea behind pex plumbing
and i'll put my playlist down underneath for all the different projects that i've done
up at my place in northern ontario and it's all off grid and it's all completely using pecs
and it's mostly with this style which is the pex rings that you compress and i did do this style
here in the beginning and there's a reason why somebody would pick this tool over this tool and
which one is the best and which one is best suited for you so we're going to go over here in the
bench and i'm going to show you the fittings i'm going to show you the different types of pex pipe
and we're going to go over the procedure on how you would actually use both these tools and you
decide which one is best for you but all i'm going to say for now is i need both of these this one
versus this one well you can get away with either one but you're going to run into a situation where
yeah you're going to need both so let's go over to the bench let's take a look let's first start
off with the pex pipe it comes in various sizes this is half inch you can get three quarter inch
you can get one inch the majority of the people are going to use the half inch so this is what
you cut it with very simple now this here is a hundred feet half inch for thirty dollars
now you go price out a hundred feet of copper half inch see how you make out because uh you're never
gonna buy it for thirty dollars and uh so this is what you use to cut it with here's the uh
the crimper i'm gonna show you what it's matched for now this is only for the crimp rings
and you can cut the old crimp ring off and reuse your fitting now this one here is a close access
crimper it's got a uh an angled head on it for for getting in spots where you don't have a lot
of access this one here is strictly for half inch and this i've showed this already and this is the
half inch so you have the first one here is going to be for the half inch next one's three quarters
and this is the three quarter ring this is the half inch ring so you can get pecks in
different types of a format you can get it in a coil or you can get it in straight sections and
this is a three quarter that's the half inch and i've shown on my channel how to make some uh
gas tank nozzles you know the nozzles that you can put on your gas tank to extend it
and you know use this stuff here and i tell you what it's better than any store-bought thing you
ever seen before so you can check that out and these are the go and no-go gauges which will
verify that you've say on the three quarter inch here that you've crimped it correctly
so you use these gauges no go and go to verify that the crimp is put on correctly
so here are some of the the connections that you buy all these different crimp fittings and
you can see how this here is a one inch and you use this with the the smaller one here
with this one here so you can see how this tool by itself here it will do the one inch
the uh the three quarter and the half inch all together now the other tools here's the the half
inch here's the three quarter so i'll tell you right now these type of crimp rings here
are about i would say a little bit more than half the price of going with the ear type you
know when you have to clamp this one and you compress this i'll show you how it's done but
i buy them i got a container here an old one i buy them in a container like this for the rings
and they are so much cheaper than the this style here
now these are all stainless steel these ones here are copper on the outside they're just painted
black but they're copper so i'm going to show you how take for instance this fitting how this
one here correlates to the instructions on how to actually insert this in the pipe and get the crimp
correctly because i will tell you something in all the years from the first time that i started using
either this style here or this style here i have never once yet had a leak and before when i was
working with copper well you're only as good as your soldering experience right and yeah i had
my share of leaks so let's take a good close look and see how this is supposed to match up with your
pex pipe and the relationship of this particular ring right here okay so there you go right there
i just got my uh cutter and i cut off a little section of pex pipe and i just want to show you
the idea behind this and if you take a look you can see right here that there's a step
that makes it stop before and when you put the clamp on you can't go beyond this little tab here
you see that i'll just move it up a little bit here for you see that little tab here so
this ring is going to fit on there just until it stops at that tab and the whole idea behind it is
you go one eighth which is here and i hope you can see the two rings there yeah they
will be compressed this one and this one will be compressed by this ring on these two ridges
or you can go 1 8 i'm sorry one quarter past and you'll go and compress the ring on here and here
so you could see how this actually works and it's pretty well foolproof now not all
the fittings have this stop tab now this fitting here is a non-metallic fitting
they're the only ones i buy anymore and i'll show you a let's see if i got a brass one
i'll show you a brass one just hold on okay so here's the brass one and you could see where
it's got a shoulder right at the end there that the pipe would stop on
and then you would have to actually just back off your ring so if i just put it on like this
you'd have to back off the ring to about an eighth of an inch and then when i pull this
away you'll see where it actually goes on these two ribs and that seals in there perfectly okay
so before we're going to go compress a ring onto the pipe i just like to show you here here is the
ring compression tool you got the half inch here and below is the three quarter now look how much
you have to actually open up the tool a minimum to about here to get it over top of the ring
and then compress it so if you could just imagine if you're working somewhere in a confined space
yeah look at the look at the amount of swing that you have here and when we look at the other tool
when the tool is completely opened up it's like this
and when you're finished crimping i don't know if you could hear it or not
there the tool automatically opens up there's a ratchet mechanism in behind here that when you
get to the end and it's come to the perfect crimp it opens a tool for you so you can see
how the tool won't open here when you get to the proper crimp compression and here's the end here
boom it's done so you could see you know like this one here yeah it's a lot less restrictive on space
and if you go to uh one like this that's a close quarter one and just get it open here there
this one here that's the most it's open right there
then you just crimp it all the way home and that's it so i mean really
you have to look at the situation at what you have in front of you
and how much room you have to crimp and what your preference is
for me i like both of them together because sometimes yeah the crimp rings using this style
well you could see on this one right i mean look at look how much you got open there's jaws
there's a lot of situations where you're you know you're restricted
by the amount of space and the amount of swing that you have to move this in there
and everything but i really haven't had that many difficult situations
so that's why i got the half inch here because i use half inch most of the time for everything
and if you're wondering about this tool here the cutter okay so the whole idea behind the cutter is
here's a a ring on here right so the whole idea is you get your tubing cutter and you cut
you cut your tubing away and what you're going to be left with is the fitting and the ring
so what you're going to have to imagine here is take for instance you have this one here like this
so you have this fitting on like this so what you would do is you would cut it back here
and i'll just take this off because i don't want to destroy it but you take this tool you insert it
now you have to remember that this is being backwards when you have the
the fitting is actually in there so you'd have to imagine that the fitting is in here as well and
the round piece goes in your pipe and this one here will cut off the ring so that you can
extract the fitting and reuse it so that's you know part of the kit and i bought this as a kit
so let me just show you a couple of compression well just i'll show you one compression ring
and at the other end i'll show you the crimp and you can decide which one you think is best
for your particular situation okay so here we go here and i've got it just in there
now you're going to have to imagine that there's a fitting in there right i'm not going to start
destroying a whole bunch of fittings just for display purposes and by the way the uh the brass
fittings for pex are about twice the price as the uh non-brass fittings
now i don't believe this is just regular plastic it's like a special type of plastic
i've had good success with it and i'll tell you something else about the pecs that i really like
is i've had this freeze solid rate solid and it doesn't bust and it doesn't uh you know split
open like a copper pipe would do the only downside if you're using this for outside like most of my
projects are outside and some of them you know the sunlight is on the pecs pipe itself well you have
to either just spray paint the pecs that's above ground that's showing because i got one situation
where i went 100 feet from my spring to where my water supply is i buried it under the ground
that's no problem but where it comes out of the ground i just put a covering over top just a like
a wire loom black wire loom over top so here the ring is on there and you can just imagine
that's it that's all you have to do so i'll take it out and i'll show you what it looks like
and that's on there just like that so now we'll take a look at the crimp ring so here
is a half inch crimp ring so what i do is
you can put it i'll show you right here you can put it over top of the ear here
right in there now what i like about this one here is it's not as hard to figure out because you can
put it in here and move the pipe in and out all you want but you just get to where you you want
and then it's hard to do this with one hand here
okay so i could tighten the ring up just a bit so it doesn't move on the pipe you make
sure that it's 1 8 to one quarter of an inch from the fitting or from the end of where you inserted
the pipe at the end here just imagine there's a fitting at the end here and you could see how
there's you know you don't have to swing open that fire or anything and then you just keep on going
and maybe you could hear it
then it opens up and there's the crimp ring at the end and if we take a look at the tab
you can see that it's crushed and the whole idea is
that if we just take a look at right there the difference between this side and that side
that compresses it to where it should be by the jaws coming in
it only allows it to crimp a certain amount then the jaws open up so i hope i've explained that
pretty good the way it is and like i say i've never had a leak yet in any of these so you
could see how this is nice and neat and it fits on here like i use this for my fuel nozzles like this
and uh inside my shower room up my camp i went with all this style and i found it was
it was a lot easier now to tell you the truth in the beginning when i first started using pex
i don't think the crimp rings you know this style here was even invented yet i think that
this style here like i say you can go all the way up to one inch i believe this was the first
pex type of clamp ring that you can actually use
compared to the compression rings so but i do prefer this style when i can only because
well this is nice and smooth all the way around right and you can see how this isn't and for a lot
of projects i'm using it for stuff that's actually non-plumbing related i use this for a lot of stuff
and i well like i say i put a link down below for all the different projects i've done like
gas cans and watering wands and you know all my plumbing up at my camp and should should i
you know like easy october sometimes you will get below freezing temperatures up in the north
and if this happens to freeze i know it's not going to bust compared to copper so i hope i've
just shared a little bit of the knowledge that i have on pex plumbing and which tool you should get
and i'd say well pick one or get both depends on your situation how much money you want to
spend because this here i paid 30 bucks this one here came in a kit for 75 dollars and it came
with the cutter and it came with the removal tool so you know really in my view they're really not
that expensive when you consider you can get a hundred feet of this stuff and this is pex
b plumbing which is not as flexible as pex a so yeah there's a lot more to this pex you know than
just a you know a little short video but uh yeah do your homework decide what you want to do but
there's a huge cost saving as well with going with this and if you're not that good at soldering well
it can be a frustrating experience with solder i don't see anybody that would have a problem
going with this type of plumbing you know attachment for your fittings and it's just
so much easier in my mind so thanks for joining me here today if you've never seen
this channel before you're welcome to subscribe come back again and get some real reviews cheers