Hello folks Dave Schuelke here with the Twin Home Experts just wanted to go
ahead and take time out and give you the insight on how to take care of that
leakage or water meter or in this case we're gonna go ahead and show you how to
make the connection using PVC pipe. So come to the meter here and watch a
step-by-step. So the first step obviously is to go ahead and shut the water off to
the meter in this case there's already a handle go ahead turn it in the
horizontal position. Now we're off. You want to verify that the meter is
working you can go inside the home or at a local hose bib and turn the water on
to verify and drain the water system. Okay so the first step you want to do is
go ahead make a nice straight cut. That's the water main feeding the home. Getting a lot of
water back pressure so slowly cut this and let the water drain out.
Now that we've cut our pipe a couple of things I like using. This is a
telescope coupling here it allows you to make that extension into the fitting.
This type of fitting here will only allow you to use up to 150 psi. So if
you're water pressure is way above that you probably want to go with something
different but because this water pressure here in this area is only 80
pounds this is a perfect, perfect fit. Okay. The second thing is I like
upgrading my fittings from schedule 40 to schedule 80 it's the grey pipe. It's
much thicker and more heavy-duty. It's not gonna snap. You need some red hot glue, some
teflon tape, as well as some pipe dope. Okay. So come on over here where the
water meter is. The first step we want to do is take this male adapter this is
schedule 80 again it's much more it's got a thicker grade piping. So it's less
likely to to break okay. So the first thing you want to do is take our teflon
tape
and go clockwise with it and I love this blue tape here it seems to seal threads
much better than your typical white teflon tape you don't want to overdo it
because if you do what'll happen is the thread you'll lose the the course of the
threads then after that let's go ahead and apply our pipe seal or pipe dope
around the threads. Now this is where it gets a little tricky is you got to make
sure you don't cross thread I always buy a couple of these because if you cross
thread one you've actually got a backup so let's see if we can do this the first
time. All right so we go ahead oh when it's turning easy for you and you want a
hand tighten it you don't want to put a wrench on it
hand tighten as much as you can and that'll confirm if you've got the
threads once you do that then you can get yourself a pair of channellocks like
this okay
we do realize that the channellock should be going other way but because
we're tight for space we're turning the channel locks this way to give us more
leverage you don't want to over-tighten just enough as to where the fitting is
gonna bottom out about right there a quarter of an inch separation if you
overdo it
this type of fittings are vulnerable because we are dealing with plastics be
aware of that okay so let's go ahead and go to the next step
all right the next step is get yourself some sand cloth and on the older pipe or
the existing water main what you want to do is after you clean it take some sand
cloth and just clean outside of the pipe. What this does it just gets
all the residual debris that's sticking to the surface of the pipe and what this
allows is it allows the glue and the new fitting to adhere and give you a better
seal. As you can see we got some of that old glue off as well.
You gotta remember too, the glue that you use already has a built-in primer so
it's gonna help remove some of the stuff as well okay. So once we clean the pipe
go ahead and get yourself a rag and do another wipe down
and the second thing is go ahead and clean the inside of the pipe you don't
want any burrs inside all right now that we've got a nice clean piece of pipe
that we can glue and now that we've got our male adapter in we're actually ready
to make these two connect here. All right so we're gonna go ahead and use primer I
think it's a must just for extra protection this really preps any
type of plastic pipe properly. Alright folks so what I've done now is I've
gotten the telescope connection here put your coupling on then go ahead and bring
it down here as you can see go ahead and connect it one side push this now this
here I'm pushing this all the way back sliding the coupling on now what I'm
gonna do is I'm going to measure from here to here and I'm gonna show you what
that looks like right now and that is as you can see here we can make a cut at a
little less than three and a half we want the end of the pipe to be here so
once we glue that then we're gonna slide this up and over that new pipe that's
what its gonna look like when we're completely done so let's go ahead and
make our pipe cut. Alright so now we're gonna go ahead and make our cut after
that three and a half mark now you can see we're using tubing cutters this is a
great way to cut PVC pipe or any type of plastic pipe nice and straight and
smooth but a saw will work as well just as long as you deburr the pipe like we
showed you earlier. Alright so once we cut this we'll go back to the meter show
you how to apply our glue and make the final connection
go ahead and use our gray strong PVC cement. The reason why I like this is
because it does the cure time is a lot less than most of your glues so as long
as you're in temperature of 60 degrees above once you apply this allow about
two hours minimum to cure and then you should be good. Best
practice is if you can hold over 24 hours that would be great but if you've got to
have that water then at least wait two hours. So let's go ahead and apply the
glue after we've prepped and primed give it a good couple of coats here. Now we're
ready for the fitting
Alright now one little secret you want to do here is once you apply your glue
go ahead and put it in the fitting you want to hold it and twist at the same
time because if you don't look it you know start coming out so times the tips
two hands in there and just hold it I would say a good 5 to 7 seconds here
all right folks are now we're gluing everything together and all our fittings
prep go ahead and slide this on do our twist hold it and then we go ahead now
push this into our meter connection here
sorry for all the breathing noises but it does take a little strength to do it
and look at this beautiful connection here folks
nice. Well hopefully that helped give you some insight on how to make and fix that
leakage of water meter as always thanks for watching.