- In this video, we're going to show you which four plumbing parts and tools you should never be using. Now you're probably wondering,
what are these things here? Well, believe it or not,
these are all available at your big buck stores
like Lowes and Home Depo, but you should not be
using these parts here. And as a matter of fact,
three of these parts here are a violation of the plumbing code and the building code so
if you were to get caught using these by your building inspector, they would freeze your job
right there on the spot and they would not approve you and you would have to get
this remedied until they would give you a properly
closed up building permit. So that all starts right now. (upbeat country music) Prohibited plumbing part number one, the S-trap. All right so let's start
here with the S-trap and why this thing is so not
the part you want to use here. Okay, so this is what
your S-trap looks like. Now you've probably never seen this before because there are really
only in older houses and so a normal P-trap,
you exit out of the sink the drain pipe would come down to here and it would go like this and then straight over into the wall. But in this case, what we're doing is we're coming out of the drain pipe, going back up into another
back to back P-trap and then it's going down this way, vertically down to the floor. So the reason why this is a banned, and all 50 states banned this by the way, it's in the uniform plumbing
code, it is a code violation. The reason why it is banned
is because a lot of times if a nearby toilet flushes, or even when you turn off your water, and if the water continues going in it and it empties out too much of this, and there's not enough water left back in here to maintain the trap seals, and remember this is supposed
to be your trap seal here, it's supposed to be covered
in water inside this pipe here from here up to about here. And this is called the trap seal. And that column of water right there is what is going to protect
you from the methane gases that are gonna come up through your pipe and get into your house. So a lot of times in older houses, people always complained about
the smell of methane gas, you know the sewer gases in their house because they had an
S-trap and it lost water. Sometimes if you have a
powerful enough toilet nearby that flushes, it can
suck some of the water, just the flow of the, it's almost like a
capillary action type thing, but not quite but basically, the flow of that toilet flushing the water can suck with the air, can
vacuum out some of the water too so that's why these are banned
in pretty much all 50 states. I don't know of a single
state that allows these, I believe if you still have one installed, they'll allow you to continue with it. But if you're getting
any kind of inspection, if you're doing any kind of remodeling, they would not allow you
to continue to use this. So if you encounter one of these and you're doing a remodeling, I would say if you don't know how to do this yourself, try to bring in a plumber that
can reroute the drain pipe inside your wall so that
you can go to a standard out of the wall waistline
so that you can just do a single regular P-trap. And really, this S-trap is
really just kind of like your free spot with Bingo. It's the easiest one of the bunch here because I don't know of
a single city or state that even allows these anymore. All right, so this is the part
of the Florida plumbing codes here, where it bans the S-traps. And remember our Florida
plumbing codes are based on the uniform plumbing
codes, which many states adopt some almost follow it exactly some might remunerate things. But I believe our chapters
are the same chapters of the uniform plumbing code
in here and chapter 10 here where it covers traps,
interceptors and separators. If you look down here in
Section 1002.3 prohibited traps. And item number five there says S-traps. So there it is, it's not even minced words or there's no way you can misconstrue it well maybe they didn't mean S-traps or maybe there's conditions
where you're allowed to have it. No, there aren't any. It specifically denies you to use S-traps. And I'm willing to bet
that every single city and every single state probably
has that prohibited trap. Prohibited plumbing part number two, the form and fit P-trap, otherwise known as the accordion P-trap, or the flexible drain pipe. This is another banned part
that you're not allowed to use. All right, so now let's take a look at why this form and fit P-trap is not allowed. Okay, so let's look first at
who uses this type of a P-trap these form and fit P-traps. So these are typically
picked out by DIYers. And of course your handymen. These are handymen specials, they call it in the plumbing industry. And the reason why they
picked something like this is when they're remodeling
or replacing your P-trap, okay, or they're
remodeling their bathroom, they put in a new vanity,
and they go to hook this up. And they realize that
this is now off-center from where it used to
be by six, seven inches. And so what do you do? You know a few inches over. So they come and they buy this
as one of those quick fixes okay? And they do this with it. So they adjust it over like that, and it looks good on paper,
but hey that's a great idea. I don't have to do
anything, it's a quick fix. But so one thing that
should set off a red flag is the fact that it's a cheap solution, it's a quick solution, and that the DIYers and all
the handymen are using it. Those to me are the big
red flag things here. Now, we did a video a few months ago about how to assemble your P-trap
when it's off-center. And in there, I showed you
the proper way to do it, which is the way the
plumbers usually do it, which is you form it out
of a few parts of PVC pipe and some fittings and
you glue them together. And it only took me
about 10 minutes of work to put all those pieces together and make a solution that works. That satisfies the plumbing code. But we got a lot of hate on
that video from all the trolls, mostly handymen that would
come on there and tell me I'm an idiot, "You just
turned a simple solution "into a difficult all day long project" and you know, they brag,
"I get these things, "I get these foreman fits,
I get these, you know, "snappy traps and all that." But these handymen don't understand that they are violating the
plumbing code by doing that. So they're coming in here bragging. And in their arrogance, they don't realize how they're totally screwing
things up for their customer. Okay, so the other reason why you don't want to have
one of these in place is that your insurance
company for your house, your homeowners insurance company, if they find out you have one of these, they will kick you off the policy. Now in the past year,
I've already had to go on to two different ladies' houses okay? To remove these because
what one lady in particular, the insurance company
came and did an inspection on her house and they discovered this, they gave her 48 hours to get rid of it or they were going to drop her. So we had to like just you
know real quick get over there and get this thing pulled out of there and put in a real P-trap setup for her. So that's another reason
why you don't want it. you get the code violations, it's not a very good solution because it traps particles and debris. And your insurance company,
if they find out you have this can potentially drop you as a customer. Okay, so now here on the the
accordion type of form and fit P-traps here, here's in the
code where it prohibits them. And it's not explicit. So you do have to sort of
read between the lines. But if you look here,
like I mentioned before, in our Florida building code,
the plumbing codes here, which follow the uniform plumbing codes. And here under, we're in Section 10 again and under traps and
interceptors and separator under Section 1002.2 design of traps. So here we're talking about
the type of trap you can use and it says fixture traps
shall be self scouring fixture traps shall not
have interior partitions, except where such traps are
integral with the fixture, or where such traps are
constructed of an approved material that may be made with an
approved elastomeric gasket, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, so it's the first part of that that really comes into play here. Because it says the fixture
trap shall be self scouring. And as I've pointed out
many times over the years, self scouring means what goes
in must be able to come out, the water that goes in there must be what cleans out the trap
as it's going in and out and through the trap. And when you have those accordions there and I've seen it because I've taken out these accordion traps from
other people's houses, the problem is all of the stuff that gets clogged in
there, all of the hair, the junk, the dust, the
goo, the toothpaste, you name it, it's in there. And if people drop floss down their drain, the floss is caught in there. And floss can cause capillary action, it can cause a very
undesirable capillary action, which means that if the floss
gets caught in the vent pipe, as it goes further down
and goes into the wall and gets caught in the vent pipe, the dental floss there can
actually cause the water to leave the trap and drip
and run down the pipe. And when you look at it, you think there's no way that can happen. It just boggles the mind. But it does happen. And it's called capillary action, and it can actually cause the
water in your trap to leave. And then you'll get the methane smell, you'll have the sewer gases coming back up because enough water
seeped out of your trap that you weren't able to maintain that column of water in there. So here's a prime example
of a really bad one. Because you imagine here,
if you had to have water and stuff coming down here and
going at an angle like this, it would all get caught in here. What if you're a guy with a
beard, and you shave your beard and all the clippings go in here and they all get caught in there. All right, so this here
is your saddle valve here. And the reason why they
call this a saddle valve is because they clamp
it around a pipe, see, so the pipe would go right
here through the middle here, right here. And it clamps over it like a saddle and you have this little
black rubber piece here that goes up in here that
it will clamp over the pipe. And it kind of looks like this, see. And so the problem with this, what people do with this is, usually handymen and
DIYers use this part here, if they have to tap into
a copper pipe for water. And they're using this
to make like a nice line go into your ice maker or for fresh water for your coffee maker. They'll do this. And what happens is the way this works is, you see this guy right here up top here, the more you tighten him down,
there's a little needle here, underneath here that pierces
down into that copper pipe. So it taps into that copper pipe. And then when you tighten everything down, this is supposed to tighten
completely down around the pipe. And then you have a nice source of water. And it was quick and easy and dirty, just like all the other code violations that we talked about, okay. So the problem with the saddle valves is they work real good at the beginning, and it doesn't take long at
all before they start leaking and dripping water. And that can turn into
a very costly repair, depending on where your
saddle valve is located. And of course can lead to
massive thousands of dollars in mold damage just
from from stupid $5 part that you had no business
using in the first place. So you're probably wondering, well, why does Home Depot and Lowes
and all the other stores make these available to people? Why are they using them? Well, I don't know why it's stupidity, there's a lot of parts that they sell you that you should not be using. And this is definitely one of them. In fact, most plumbers when
they show up on the scene will just take this off and chuck it. So the people generally
use this because they lack one, they lack the skill set to do any kind of soldering of pipe. And two, they're too cheap
to bring in a plumber that can do the fix for them in 10 minutes and just solder in like
a T-adapter for them. And then they can have a tap in to convert into something like this
where they could screw their hosing for the water. But it always boils
down to time and money. Somebody was trying to save time, somebody was trying to save money. And then you combine that with a handymen that doesn't know what the
heck he's doing, all right. Has absolutely zero common sense. And I don't know how in
the world, people think that it's okay to just tap in
and pierce a pipe like that. And I'll tell you something else too. A lot of times when they
tighten down on these or just the act of piercing into the pipe can deform that pipe and
take it out of round. That also could lead to
turbulence of the water inside that pipe, which could break down any nearby soldering
Connections on the pipe too. So there's secondary
failures that can happen. I've seen some of these that
they were so badly corroded and everything that
eventually it could corrode through the copper pipe
that it's on because of all the water leaking through, that will greatly accelerate
that pipe degrading and falling apart and just crumbling. And then you'll have a much
bigger leak on your hands. One that's like literally shooting water. So that's why you never want
to use a saddle valve ever. Okay, so there's your saddle
valve on the pipe here, ready to be installed. So this is how your
uninformed handymen do this. They screw down both ends of this until it's tighten on the pipe. And I'll do this side here. So they wait till it's
nice and snug like that. See. Make sure it's really
squeezing on there good. And you can see how the,
that's the saddle right there. Okay, so then what they do
is they they start screwing this thing down here. And that little point is
going to shoot right down into the middle and go right
into the top of the pipe. So I can feel it grabbing into it now. So I think we might have it, we'll see. They usually go all the
way down till it's tight. Okay, so now we're going
to loosen this back up, and we'll see if it
pierced the pipe there. So this will come all the way up again, reverse it all the way
back up to where it was. And we'll loosen this. You can see right there,
there's your hole. So the hole is right there
where the tip of my finger is. So it's just a very small hole. And that hole allows the water to come up through the saddle valve here and it comes out of this port here where you have your ice maker hose going. And that's how it supposedly works. OK, so now we're going to
show you where in the code, it says here that you cannot
use these saddle valves, okay? So again, here in our
Florida building code and the plumbing codes
here, which are based on like I've mentioned before,
the uniform plumbing code. And in there in chapter six
is where we find ourselves now under water supply and distribution. So right here in Section 605.9, under prohibited joints, and Connections. It says the following types
of joints and connections shall be prohibited. And if you look at number four, it says right there saddle type fittings. And again, there's no ambiguity here. There's no well, they
didn't directly say it. So we should be able to use it, or we're just using a temporary, you know, we should be able to use it. Nobody ever does a temporary saddle joint because they know damn well
if they unscrew the thing and take it off, they're going to have water shooting everywhere. So let's not kid ourselves, anybody that thinks they're
doing a temporary fitting with a saddle type fitting
with a saddle valve is nuts. They're just lying to themselves. They're lying to you. They're hiding it from the inspectors. And this is why you do not
ever use a saddle type fitting. Now this is a tool here that I've used this a few times before I used to own one of
these, I threw it out, I don't even use it anymore. So I paid up my own money
just to show you guys what not to buy. So you're welcome America. But anyway, so this is a
faucet handle sleeve puller. And you know, I have some Husky tools, I enjoy Husky I don't have
any problem with their tools, but this particular tool,
complete total waste of money. I cannot recommend this
tool for anybody to use. And I'll show you why right now. Okay, so let me show you here. Now why we use this tool here. So normally, when we're doing plumbing and when we're remodeling, every time I come across
a water cut off valve, I change them automatically,
whenever we're remodeling, I just automatically change it out no matter what to a brand new one. And so this is how they actually
work here, let me show you. So when you change out one
of these angle stops here, these are called compression. So what happens is you
unscrew the knot here with your big rigid,
all in one wrench there. And when it unscrews, the valve comes off. But then you can't get this
off because you're supposed to. Now this won't be moving, this will be compressed in place, okay? But this is going to be compressed down, that's where the seal is actually made. Otherwise, you would have
dripping water everywhere. And so you can't get
the the nut off of there until you get this thing off here. This is the sleeve. Some people call this the
ferrule F-E-R-R-U-L-E, Some people call it a ferrule ring. Some people call it a ferrule sleeve. Some people just call it a sleeve. But no matter what you call
it, that part has to come off. So how do you get that thing off? Well, the way this tool supposedly works is you're supposed to
stick it in here like this. And it goes on all the way in the pipe It is supposed to go all
the way around that thing. And it's supposed to screw this
part here into the big nut. Okay, like that. And once it screws into the nut, you're then supposed to
take this guy here and turn. So then once you have the
whole apparatus on there, the tool is now in
place, you were supposed to turn the handle here,
while squeezing this with your hands to hold this
bracket here behind the nut. And watch what happens. See, it's supposed to
slowly pull the nut out. The only problem is that
you'll see a lot of times you have this problem going on, you can't quite get the right distance. And so you're going to have
to handle banging with it. That's one failure mode that I see a lot. The other one is it's just
a poor design of this handle that they don't give you
enough mechanical advantage by making it longer. Like you would on other tools
where you stick a screwdriver through and crank it around,
you know you don't have a moment arm or a wrenching
action that you can take use of because now you are just
doing with your thumb and a couple of fingers on the backside. So that's weird and that
hurts your fingers really bad because sometimes you get these sleeves that don't want to budge. And this is not the tool for something that doesn't want to budge, because what happens
is, as you're squeezing with all your might,
and trying to turn this with all your might with
a couple of fingers, what happens is the forces are too great. And it wants to spread this guy like this, and it just pops right, it
just it can't seem to do it, it just, these keep popping out like this. There's too much movement, you can't have a tool like
this with movement like this, you have to have a rigid tool
that's designed specifically to fit around the back of
that nut and stay there. Okay, that's why I don't
like this thing at all. And not only that, these are
sharp edges all over here, and they dig into your hand. And so I had, I bought one
of these a few years ago, I made the mistake of buying because it 'cause it was a cheap $10 tool. The problem here is that
when you get those sleeves that don't want to budge,
you're fighting with this thing. One time, I fought for
45 minutes with a sleeve, that didn't want to come off. And I couldn't just cut the pipe behind it and say the heck with it,
because there wasn't enough pipe behind there to cut it because
whoever the plumber was originally, that put this
on there wasn't too bright and left a very short
amount of copper pipe and so I couldn't even
get behind it to cut it. So that's why I went and started to buy two different tools that I use now. All right, so what I have here is these two other prefer
tools that I like to use. So I use this duck puller here, this is probably my favorite one. And this one cost about 40 bucks. So that's why a lot of
people are not so willing to pay that kind of money. And it works in a similar fashion. They all work under the same pretense that they want to go around. Let me get this just closer here. They go around behind the nut. And then this screws in here, and it forces itself
against the copper pipe. And then you can see all I
have to do is get a wrench and turn this guy here. And let me get it right
there for you to see. So all I need is this wrench here, which doesn't fit, does this side? No, wait just one minute. Okay, yes. All right, so all I do is I take my wrench and just turn it like that. See, let me just take it off and show you because I really have it loose, you just take the wrench
and you keep turning it and you can see how it
slowly pulls the nut with the sleeve right off of the pipe. It really is that easy. Now of course here,
you're going to be using your small wrench and
adjustable wrench or whatever, or fixed or you can
use this one, this side of the rigid all in one
wrench fits it perfectly. I will put a link to this
wrench down in the description so you can check it out. It's probably one of the best things ever. I use this so much in plumbing, because it's designed to fit everything, all of your valves and the toilet, you know the toilet hose as well, to secure the toilet hose onto the valves. But see how this screws
this off right there. it's just that quick and that easy. There's another tool that I use. Okay, so here's another tool I use, it does the same very
similar type thing here. So it looks like this. So you take this and
it fits over the pipe. And it screws into the big nut there. See. So once I have that
screwed into the big nut, and it's nice and tight, what I then do is I get a socket with a
ratchet and put it right here and just click click
click, just keep turning it and turning it and you'll
see what's happening. See how it slowly draws the
nut right off of the pipe with the sleeve, it just
pushes it against the sleeve. So that's a much better
mechanical advantage than this other stupid thing. This is probably one of
the worst designs ever. I'm quite surprised really
at Husky that they would put out a tool like this. I mean, this thing is just horrible. And it hurts your hand to even use it. These other two here are nothing, okay? Now yeah, this is a lot cheaper. It's 10 bucks. But what good is it when
it doesn't even work on most of the sleeves that
you're going to be pulling off because let me tell you something. Now what I showed you
here was just so easy, I could do it with my hand. But remember when these are compressed on, and they're on there for 30 years, and corroded and the pipe has
maybe got green and corrosion, that thing's not coming off, it's like permanently cemented on there. And you need something
that's real aggressive that goes old school on that, like this, it's a simple case of push
and pull at the same time. And this is a much easier
mechanical advantage, the ability to use a wrench and the screw that you know it's using
the the threaded screw that slowly like a warm drive almost it just slowly drives it up. So that's why we don't
recommend you use this thing, save yourself the agony and don't bother. All right, so we'll take another
look here at all of our new enemies and hopefully some
new friends over here. And we'll put a link down
on the description here in the video description to
all of these newer tools here. So that if you want to go
buy any of them from Amazon, you can and just remember we
get a little bit of commission from Amazon when you
buy through our links. That's what supports our channel, gives us a little bit of income. And that's what allows
us to keep continuing bring you these useful videos. Okay? So we appreciate your support on that. And we hope you enjoyed
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disaster information. And that's it for this time, folks. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you on the next one. (upbeat country music)
