Pipefittings

I doubt there’s a DIY plumber out there who hasn’t experienced the frustration making multiple trips to the hardware store to complete a repair. I know I have.

Putting together a network of pipes of different diameters and materials can be like assembling a puzzle. Sometimes you don’t know exactly which fitting to buy until you reach the part of the puzzle where you need it.

PEX fitting

Toolstation

Plumbing fittings vary by size, purpose and material. You often must tie together pipes of different materials with transition fittings. The materials in common use today — copper, PVC and CPVC, PEX, ABS, galvanized steel and cast iron — can mostly all be connected to each other with appropriate fittings.

With all the different pipe sizes and materials out there, things can get confusing. Fittings for water lines are different than those for drain and waste lines. It’s no wonder professional plumbers don’t go anywhere without a truck full of fittings. It’s their magic cupboard, letting them complete installations and repairs much more efficiently than amateurs like me.

If you're doing a plumbing installation or repair, you'll need to buy pipe and pipe fittings. Here's some help figuring out which fittings you need.

Plumbingtools

PEX is quickly becoming the material of choice for water lines. But PVC, CPVC and copper are still in common use, as is galvanized steel outdoors.

Here are the most common drain fittings. The list doesn’t include couplers and ordinary bends, because they’re similar to the ones used for water pipes and serve the same purposes.

Push fitfittings

Three reasons for PEX’s popularity are its flexibility (it can bend around corners), durability and ease of assembly. You simply push PEX pipes and fittings together rather than gluing (PVC and CPVC), soldering (copper) or screwing them (galvanized steel).

Corrugated pipe

Cast iron was a common material for drain pipes in the first part of the 20th century. They’re usually connected with couplers that feature rubber gaskets surrounded by stainless steel sheathing.

These days, most drains are made with PVC or ABS plastic. Plastic drain fittings are usually glued, but the ones you might need to remove temporarily, like cleanout plugs, are threaded.

Whether you’re connecting PVC or CPVC pipes to copper, cast iron pipes to ABS or galvanized pipes to copper, you’ll need a transition fitting. In some cases, you can do it by taking two threaded adapters of different materials and screwing them together. But it’s often easier to use an adapter specifically made to couple them, assuming you can find one.

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