[srmatto]

I can't comment on this idea but I will say that I would have expected press fittings to have brought down the cost of plumbing because they don't require soldering up to certain diameter. But they don't seem to have had any impact on the cost of plumbing despite not requiring as much skill.

https://www.ferguson.com/content/ideas-and-learning-center/t...

[gtowey]

The skill of a plumber isn't in knowing how to solder. I've run copper pipe and soldered fittings on my own plenty of times, it's not hard. The skill is in either knowing the building codes inside and out when dealing with new work, or for remodel work it's knowing all the tricks of how to alter existing plumbing quickly, cleanly and efficiently. Both those skills are only developed with experience.

[bluGill]

Press fittings have a well earned reputation of leaking after a few years (they mostly rely on rubber o-rings that will dry out over a decade). They are rarely used by anyone who knows what they are doing.

Note that crimp fitters (which your link discourages!) do not have the same problem and are what most are moving too. Soldering still has a place, but is rarely used because modern PEX is so much cheaper and easier to work with.

[srmatto]

I wasn't aware of the difference. I guess I meant to say crimp fittings.

[ooklala]

My experience with push fit and press fit is that if they aren't perfectly done (or have a manufacturing defect) they can appear to be secure, only to fail catastrophically at some random point hours/years in the future...

With a solder joint or a traditional compression fitting (the ones with olives) it's obvious if the connection is no good.

[buildsjets]

Perhaps because you do not do plumbing yourself, you do not realize that making the pipe connections is a trivial part of the job. I learned how to sweat a copper pipe in about 15 minutes of training. You can learn it off YouTube. It is not a high-skilled operation.

[srmatto]

I don't know much about plumbing and didn't mean to offend any plumbers but yeah pipe connections definitely seem trivial but I guess that's not most of the job in reality.

[mothballed]

I don't think DIYer even bother learning how to sweat copper pipe anymore. I plumbed an entire house myself using pex for the supply. All I had to know was how to press the trigger to expand the pipe.

The only copper I had was a copper stub for the toilet supply, but I used pex expansion to terminate there too because they make copper-pex stubs.

[lesuorac]

Skill isn't the issue though time is and soldering itself is pretty fast.