Plumbing

[knotanymore]

Hello- I recently purchased a 1996 43' Carver and I have few plumbing breaks in the shore intake water lines.
Its appears to be a heavy wall, grey plastic lines.(1/2") There are fittings that have a male end that the pipe fits over...pushed on the connectors are plastic and have a nut that is turned and tightend. The other side has treaded male. I need few connectors , a 90' a strait and a couplings. Are they available , are there any options , have been looking, but no one seems to know where to get them, Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[awboater]

My 1995 Carver 325 has connectors called Flex, which seem to be kind of flimsy. They are nylon fittings and are as you described, so since the boats are about the same vintage, I am sure they are the same. The Flex connectors I have on my boat are shown here.

The fittings also go by the name of Flair-it, or FlexPex.

You can also upgrade to a connector called Pex, which uses the same kind of tubing. The fittings on my boat used 1/2 tubing.

For the Pex fittings, rather than turning a thread, they simply snap on, and I would consider upgrading to those connectors. The great thing is that both Pex and Flex can be used at the same time (but they are not interchangeable).

I mean to say you can have a Flex fitting on one end of the tube, and a Pex fitting on the other end.

This means that you can use the same tubing for the Pex fittings. However, the Flex fittings normally deform the ends of the tubing a bit, so if you change from Flex to Pex, you will have to cut about 1" off the end to use the Pex fittings - because they require a straight, non-deformed piece of tubing. Of course, if this makes the tubing too short, you may have to re-tube some areas.

Pex are available at any well stocked Lowes or ACE Hardware. I have found that ACE also carries the Flex fittings as used by Carver in the 1995 era.

Amazing; using common piping material rather than some exotic marine stuff you cannot buy. But I'll bet in 1995, those fittings were considered exotic.

I am not a plumber, so I might have some of the termonology incorrect. I ended up busting one of the fittings going to the hot water heater pictured above, and thought, man, where will I ever find something like this.....

But after running around to 6 or so home improvement centers, I found the Pex at Lowes - and even a guy that knew what he was talking about. I bought a few fittings and some tubint and fixed the busted fitting.

I then later found the Flex fittings at ACE.

 

[knotanymore]

Thanks,Big help, found what I needed.

 

[propeller55]

I've used the PEX lines for replacements on my 1981. I like it because it allows for a 90 degree bend without kinking. Plus, ther fittings are easy to use and just hand-tighten. The gray pipe is just getting old and brittle, particularly on the hot water lines.