House was built in the late 80's & plumbed with PB, yuck! Have had several leaks, time to rip it out! I'm a seasoned DIY'er & will be tackling this myself. I have already purchased all the tubing & fittings, etc along with the Milwaukee M12 expansion tool. I've downloaded & read the Uponor installation guide, have watched a bunch of Youtube videos & have spent some time practicing with the tool & making test connections to get the hang of it.
For those of you who have used this system or the Milwaukee tool I have a couple of "dumb" questions I hope you can answer.
1) I started off by simply using the tool on a piece of 1/2" tubing with no Propex ring so that I could compare the marks made inside the tubing against the pictures in the install guide. I expanded until the tubing hit the stop on the M12 then expanded one more time & let the tubing sit to watch it constrict. The tubing did not return 100% to the original size. Normal? I realize a proper connection would have a Propex ring as well, but was expecting the tubing to return to is unexpanded size.
2) Next I have a question on my technique with the M12 tool. I am expanding the tubing until it butts up against the stop on the M12 head then giving it one more expansion. The Milwaukee manual states to expand 8-9 times for 1/2" tubing. I found that with 4-5 expansions the tubing with a Propex ring could be fully seated onto the fitting. Is there a reason I should expand 8-9 times? Uponor cautions against over expanding the tubing & it seems to me that 8-9 expansions might.
3) I'm using the EP fittings, colored tubing, & white Propex rings. On my test connections I can see the tubing is firmly contacting the fitting at the main barb but seems to be making lesser contact on other parts of the fitting. Normal? I'm unable to pull the connections apart so that's a good sign.
Thanks for taking the time to read all this. In case you can't tell I tend to over analyze things a bit, but if you could answer my silly questions I'd appreciate it.
-Dave
For those of you who have used this system or the Milwaukee tool I have a couple of "dumb" questions I hope you can answer.
1) I started off by simply using the tool on a piece of 1/2" tubing with no Propex ring so that I could compare the marks made inside the tubing against the pictures in the install guide. I expanded until the tubing hit the stop on the M12 then expanded one more time & let the tubing sit to watch it constrict. The tubing did not return 100% to the original size. Normal? I realize a proper connection would have a Propex ring as well, but was expecting the tubing to return to is unexpanded size.
2) Next I have a question on my technique with the M12 tool. I am expanding the tubing until it butts up against the stop on the M12 head then giving it one more expansion. The Milwaukee manual states to expand 8-9 times for 1/2" tubing. I found that with 4-5 expansions the tubing with a Propex ring could be fully seated onto the fitting. Is there a reason I should expand 8-9 times? Uponor cautions against over expanding the tubing & it seems to me that 8-9 expansions might.
3) I'm using the EP fittings, colored tubing, & white Propex rings. On my test connections I can see the tubing is firmly contacting the fitting at the main barb but seems to be making lesser contact on other parts of the fitting. Normal? I'm unable to pull the connections apart so that's a good sign.
Thanks for taking the time to read all this. In case you can't tell I tend to over analyze things a bit, but if you could answer my silly questions I'd appreciate it.
-Dave