Plumbing - bushings/ converting in size

[Chris Labatt-Simon]

Hi all -

We have a sink in our aft cabin. The hot water comes through a copper pipe that looks to be about 1/4" in diameter. It connects to a slightly larger pipe which then goes to the faucet. The connection is basically a bushing of some sort inside a screw cap that screws to the copper pipe that goes to the faucet. The feed pipe doesn't have any threading and just kind of sits in the bottom of the bushing. This bushing has gone bad and the pipes are leaking at the connection.

Has anyone replaced this? Any suggestions? I need to move fast as we're heading to CT this coming up weekend and I can't use my water until I fix this connection.

Thanks!

Chris

Pelican 1984 P40 #76

[Tommy C]

Hi Chris, 

I've done a lot of residential plumbing and have replaced all the faucets in our 47. Let me apologize in advance if you already know some of this, I'm just going to be thorough. The important thing is to know what kind of copper tubing you've got. Because it's easier to bend, a lot of boats (including mine) have refrigeration tubing rather than plumbing tubing. This is not a concern at all. If it's fairly soft and you see it bending through the bilge or cabinetry, it's probably refrigeration tubing. One key difference is that copper refrigeration tubing is sized by outside diameter vs. copper plumbing pipe being measured by inside diameter. Our 47 has half inch O.D. refrigeration tubing for the hot water and 1/2 I.D. reinforced vinyl hose for the cold water. Your faucets probably came with built-in copper supply lines maybe 8-10 inches in length that are of a different diameter than the boat's tubing. As a result, an adapter was probably used. In my boat, the adapter was a compression fitting that uses rubber gaskets. These are not ideal but were used back in the 80's. No idea the exact size tubing you've got but a common brass adapter size would adapt 1/2 O.D. pipe/tubing to 1/2 I.D. pipe/tubing. If you google 1/2 inch to 3/8 inch compression adapter you will see several examples. The best thing to do is take the whole thing including your faucet to a hardware store and try to match it up. Someone in the plumbing section can likely look at what you've got and sell you the right adapters and lines. These adapters do not need threaded pipe to work. They typically use a compression fitting with a barrel shaped ferrule that slides onto the pipe, then there is a brass nut that tightens down to whatever threaded adapter or pipe is next in the line. My 47 had rubber washers and an older style compression fitting that I removed and replaced with the newer style as described above. To get from the adapter to my sink faucet, I used a flexible tubing pre-fit with the right size ends. If you google 3/8 to 1/2 flexible supply lines, you will see several examples. Using the flexible lines makes the whole project easier because they can bend and coil in tight places avoiding the hassle of lining up copper to copper connections. The can easily fit to the aforementioned copper tubing compression adapter. You simply leave off the compression nut and screw the flex tubing onto the adapter end. Do not over tighten these!! Tighten them by hand, then maybe another quarter turn with a wrench. In contrast, you can tighten the heck out of the copper/brass ferrule fittings. 

Best of luck and I hope your sail up to CT is a good one!!

Tom

[Tommy C]

Hi Chris, 

Here is a photo of the old supply line in our P47, perhaps yours is the same or similar. I removed the entire connection, took some 320 grit sandpaper and cleaned up the copper tubing, then replaced the fitting entirely with a new compression adapter and some flexible supply line. Since I replaced the faucet, the flexible supply line fit right onto the new one. Had I reused the old faucet, I probably would have put a compression fitting on those lines (the line coming down from above) then connected it all together with flex line.

Tom

On Sunday, October 1, 2023 at 4:31:32 PM UTC-4 Chris Labatt-Simon wrote: