No More Hose Bibs - A Better Outdoor Faucet

hose bibbs every house has them they're typically ugly they often drip and leave a green stain by your front door and sometimes they burst and cause massive problems in the wintertime on the build show today I'm going to show you one that solves all the normal problems on the build show today we're talking about hose bibs now first let me show you what's standard practice throughout the whole southern US this is Texas Florida Georgia all the southern states where it doesn't freeze very often they've got one of these this is seven dollar hose bib and it's attached to a length of plumbing pipe that's coming through the wall and believe it or not the water actually shuts off outside the wall now the northern builders are snickering at this because they've known for years not to do this but in the south we still install these today and every five or six years we have a hard freeze that comes through and all those houses got built have a burst pipe somewhere that causes big flood damage now builders when they build those are telling clients put an insulation jacket over that during the winter time or they're saying use some heat tape like this to prevent it but ultimately it's the northern builders that know what you want to install is one that the homeowner doesn't have to think about and that's this right here it's a frost free hose bib what's happening here is instead of shutting the water off outside the wall it's actually shutting the wall the water off six inches inside the wall cavity so when I turn this gate valve right here it's shutting it off way back here deep into the insulation now this one also has a vacuum breaker on there now that's required by code as well so that when we turn off the water it's going to break the vacuum let some air in there and drop out the water that's from here to the hose now remember either type or really whatever type you want to take your hose off in the winter because you could still have some freezing there but this is a much better choice but on today's episode I want to show you an even cooler choice that I just found out about not too long ago that I'm finally putting in my houses for the very first time this is the aqua house hydron now check this out what we've got here is a frost free hose bib that actually looks good too now this happens to be the six inch model they sell it in several different models but again it's going to shut the water off inside the wall but what you'll notice is missing out here is there's no handle set very sleek very clean installed now this one's actually what you're gonna see installed on this house here this has the flap cover on there and then to turn the water on and off instead of having a handle set where you're gonna scrape your knuckles on the outside you're gonna attach this to your hose and when you thread this in it just takes a quarter turn the water is gonna turn on and once you pop that in and this is already attached to your hose and when you pop it off again the water turns off it's got a vacuum breaker on here this is the version two so if you're building new you have to use this one to meet standard codes and now with this vacuum breaker the water is gonna be naturally let out in this distance back here now if you're in the South the four or six inch model is gonna work just fine for you that's all you're really gonna need to make sure you don't freeze it doesn't freeze long enough and hard enough to need longer than that but if you're in the northern climates you want to think about the 8 10 or 12 inch model if you've got the room the longer the depth of better they're all about the same price now these are expensive in comparison these run about ninety dollars but in the scheme of things 60 bucks more for a really nice-looking hose bib that has some cool features not a bad deal at all now they've got a couple options on these as well you can get a standard kind of hydrant on there that already has a handle attached to it so when you actually thread this in now you could leave this attached and it's going to turn your water on or off and they also make this in a gray or blue color so you can kind of decide what you want there but you have to remember that you're gonna need one of these aqua supplies so you want to attach one of these all your hoses and I'd probably order one or two extra so you can leave those behind with your clients now a couple things you want to know about this though if you're installing this a new construction not a retrofit the new construction the best practice is going to be actually leave a loop of water line in the wall and my preference would be to plumb these Impex which is a flexible piping system so for instance on this house here we've decided to do a loop inside the wall cavity and remember you're not gonna do this in the body of let's say a 2x6 wall you need to do it in a spot where you've got some depth I'm slab on grade on this house so I don't have the traditional basement with a rim joist area so I had to install these in places where I had intersecting interior walls or a double deep area that allowed me some space but what we used was a section of pipe basically we used three inch PVC and then I used the street 90 so that I could direct that loop of water in there again because it specs it's flexible and what this allows me to do is service the unit in the future so 20 30 years from now if I had a drip in this unit or I had something go bad with a washer in here I can actually unscrew it I can pull this all the way out of the wall cavity I can unhook it and change it if I want to I could do service or maintenance to it then I can put it right back in the wall and screw it back together that's definitely your best practice now you may not be able to do that if this is a retrofit project for you but if you're building new you want to do that that's the best way to do it guys big thanks for aqua for sponsoring today's video this is a product I saw at the International Builder show a couple years ago and I've been wanting to do this so I'm really glad these guys sponsored today's video we use this for the very first time in this house and I really like it and my clients are excited about this and what I like about it is that I don't have to worry about frozen pipes it's automatically taken care of for the client nothing to think about no shut off routine in the winter time none of that everything's automatically done for more information on aqua there'll be a link in the description below otherwise follow me on Twitter Instagram we'll see you next time on the build show [Music]

Channel: Matt Risinger

Views: 1,225,335

Keywords: hose bib, aquor review, hose bib review, freeze proof hose, frozen pipes, freeze proof faucet

Id: JItfWP7Li-8

Length: 6min 23sec (383 seconds)

Published: Fri May 04 2018