Pro Press fitting failure

Ken_40

It appears you are not alone. If you could provide pictures sized to ~800 pixels wide of what is leaking, it would be most helpful.

I am doing a research paper on the topic of press fitting problems and would love to include your experience to the study. At this point, only data collection is happening. But your data appears relevant.

And, may I contact you directly via e-mail for more details?

Thanks,

Ken

Carl Boccolucci

Pro Press fitting failure

I'm in charge of a residence hall at the University of Buffalo. The building I'm in charge of has a hydronic heating system supplied by 2 steam heat exchangers. We recently had 2 pro press fittings fail. The operating pressure is between 60-75 lbs depending on the 3 variable speed pumps(controlled by pressure differential switches)The system is designed to operate at 200 degrees F.We have 2 pressure relief valves set at 200 lbs.On furthor investigation after the 2 incidents (10 days apart) we found a flooded expansion tank. If the system was over pressurized the relief valves should have taken care of the problem before the failures, We're puzzled. As an update we had mechanical expansion compensators on all the risers that seem to have not been supported properly or sufficent guides used.

Jeff Elston

fittings

Interesting a couple Q's come to mind

Who manufactured the ball valves?
Are the relief valve in good working order?
How about some pics?
I assume it was the o-ring in the valve that failed?

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DanHolohan

I've let the manufacturer know

about this thread.

ScottMP

Jeff

What makes you say its a Ball Valve ? I saw nothing in the post that mentioned a Ball Valve ?

Scott

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Robert O'Brien

Dan

are these Viega fittings or Elkhart or Nibco?Most people use the name propress to refer to all press type fittings.

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Robert O'Brien

Dan

are these Viega fittings or Elkhart or Nibco?Most people use the name propress to refer to all press type fittings. It's not fair to any of the manufacturers

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Contractor

OK, I have studied up since the recent outbreak of propress posts (largely one big post) bc i hope to own a tool one day and i have learned about the fittings and O'RINGS, key word. first, if you used the EPDM oring than you already messed up bc it is not rated for steam use, you have to use the FKM. Now, if you used the FKM oring with over 15 psi (seems like you have) you messed up there, the oring is rated for a low pressure steam application (less than 15 psi). Either way it looks like an installer error not a defect.
I hope this helps.

Contractor

My post refers to the fittings leading to the steam heat exchangers, if they are on the hydronic side i apologize.

Carl Boccolucci

Pro Press failure

The fittings are quality fittings my building has in excess of 20,000 pro press joints. I would spec them in any other building that my staff maintain. I was just looking for an explanation of for the failure so a similar incident could be avoided. This wasn't an attempt to subject the manufacturer with negative publicity. So instead of everybody fixing the blame help to fix the problem.

Thanks

Brad White_9

Carl

I do not think anyone was doing the blame game. It is just that there was a seriously long thread about six months ago which revealed a number of failures, particularly with glycol but of note in general.

The discussion in that direction goes to that root concern (of which you may not have been aware). Thus the stated relevance. It all goes into the proverbial database and we are trying to avoid bashing anyone.

The product/system is brilliant in principle and the many of us that use it (or in my case having specified it on the engineering side) want it to succeed. Part of that is ferreting out the application or mis-application.

One common element of failure, at least preliminarily, was the belief that the pipe ends were out of round, either not de-burred and reamed or dropped in some way. Out of round in a way not necessarily detectable to the eye but enough to lose tolerance between o-rings and the pipe wall.

VERY glad to know that you have had broad success thus far! Encouraging.

Jeff Elston

Carl

Carl the email I got from you is a tell tale on how to avoid this scenario.

It is a Viega claim sheet and it details why the fittings failed.

Should we not share?


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gerry gill

please share

especially since i use pro-press..

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Jeff Elston

Share?

I can not. There is alot of info on there having nothing to do with pipes. It is up to Carl. I dont know why he sent it to me.

I will look again and come uo with somethign

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Jeff Elston

I agree

I made a mistake. oops. I apologize for any confusion I created.

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