Hep20 fittings.

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Discuss Hep20 fittings. in the Plumbing Jobs | The Job-board area at PlumbersForums.net

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dryerman

Hello.

We did a major re-plumb of our house in 2004 [with a fully skilled and experienced plumber] using predominently Hep20 grey push fit connectors. I am very concerned with the failure rate of these fittings [6 to date] in both the hot and cold circuits and all sizes.

On inspection of failed fittings we find the 'green gripper ring' has disintegrated. We replace the fittings with a different make which has a better style of grip ring.

Made all the usuall enquiries with suppliers but not much help so far.

Has anyone had similar experience and any further advice?

Thanks.
 
Is the green ring almost a shaped wedge? then the usual o ring and steel gripper?

If memory serves they no longer use this. The fitting is molded to include the shape rather than require the ring.

I thought the fittings were under garantee?

Ive not heard of them failing before so perhaps you had a bad batch?
 
Thanks for your reply.

Yes the green ring has a wedge profile with the 'grips' moulded in to it.

We took this up with Hepworth in 2005 they said it was our water treatment causing the problem. That is B******S because it happens in the cold line as well.
 
I've never had a problem with HEP2O. Coincidentally though, the other day I used a customer's old one, push it in, turned the water on and ... Wooosh!!
 
Yes they have all had s/steel inserts.

It seems to me that where the 'grip barbs' are moulded into the green plastic ring is the week point, the barbs break away and the green ring shatters into pieces.

Could this be a design flaw which has now been changed?

Thanks for your help.
 
Hello Again.

Picture of a recently failed 15mm fitting from a cold supply line.

Thanks
 

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  • Hep2o fitting.jpg
    Hep2o fitting.jpg
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Hep2O fittings used to have complete stainless steel grab ring with an O ring seal and a plastic protector ring to stop the pipe slicing the O ring.

I don't know how old this current model with the stainless teeth moulded in.. ??

I guess it depends on what type of plastic the ring is made from .. some plastics are affected by chlorine and will disintegrate over time.

You would think that they would learn the lessons of the past .. obviously some bright young thing has told the boss he can save a fortune in stainless steel with his innovative design.

I would push Wavin a bit harder do some googling for polybutylene failures in the US

gulluck :):)
 
the picture shows 3rd generation hep fitting,and supposed to have a 10 year life span,and inhibitor should not degrade the fitting as they are designed with inhibtor use in mind,sounds like you have a dodgy batch.
 
If thats what happens to them in 4/5 years i feel for the people in the houses on the site in Stockton on Tees that i worked on . I must have put 1,000's in the years i was there .:eek::eek::eek::eek:
 
That is the current design. The earlier ones had a pressed all stainless stel gripper like the polyplumb ones. The original Hepworth ones weren't called Hep20 though.

The polyplumb fittings also have the gripper on the inside and the o ring behind it so that the gripper cannot mark the pipe where the o ring seals.
 
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plumbbobshan said:
If thats what happens to them in 4/5 years i feel for the people in the houses on the site in Stockton on Tees that i worked on . I must have put 1,000's in the years i was there .:eek::eek::eek::eek:
Click to expand...
this is a little scary to see when I think how many I have put in over the last few years.
 
Sorry to be a bit late on this but only registered to day
I have the same issue. Re-furbished our house 3 years ago cut off a stop tap and installed complete new plumbing and heating installation using Hep2O.
18 months ago a 22mm elbow failed in heating circuit. I got the usually platitudes from Hepworth about contamination of fitting before installation blah blah blah.
I put it down to bad luck even though It look suspicious to me.
Friday night I came home to no boiler pressure. Eventually traced leak to a failure of a 15 mm elbow again in heating. You would expect the heating to fail first due to the higher temperature.
I have checked several other accessible fittings and all show signs of deterioration to the green grab ring.
I now feel like I'm sitting on a time bomb just waiting for the next failure.
Where you can get at them its no big deal but under my new Oak floors!!
I will be speaking to Hepworth but don't much joy, yet.
 
I NEVER use plastic on heating circuits or any pipework under floors or in lofts. To be honest the reason is mainly that most of the leaks I have had to deal with have been caused by mice and rats, and they don't touch copper.

The main failure of Hep2O pipe have come across is through frozen pipework. Some fail at the grab ring and I have had others fail at the thread on the covers.

Personally it's the grey Polyplumb due to the strong all stainless grab rings.

I think the old Hepworth HPB fittings had a solid stainless grab ring too? Why on earth did they downgrade it?
 
All you can do is contact Wavin Hep20 and ask them what they think the problem is.
If no one tells them, they aint gonna do anything. might be time for a product recall, can you imagine that.
 
Already spoken to them. All I got was 'it can only be contamination from fitting'
Trading Standards say the contract is with the supplier (City Plumbing) not Wavin/Hepworth
I agree though does look like a problem for them and us
 
I have spoke to a Wavin rep about this a year ago and his response was that certain types of flux, used in other parts of the system could affect the fittings, if the system wasnt flushed properly.

I cant remeber which flux but I know it wasnt La Co flux, as that is what i use.

As for the response from Trading Standards, typical British bureacracy, the fault cant be with the supplier as they didnt make the fittings, Phone Wavin and insist that they get a rep out to you pronto at least for an explanation as to what could be contaminating your fittings, ask them to test the water in your system. before the rest of the pipework falls apart.
 
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The fault is not with the supplier, but the contract is. I'm sure Wavin don't care about me as an individual but they should take more notice of a major reseller.
I am going to pursue this further just sounding out for others with similar problem.
The fittings failing isn't really the issue it the work/cost involved in gaining access under oak floors and in stud partitions etc.
The quality of the water in the system shouldn't be much of an issue since it is the green grab ring that is failing and that is isolated from the water by the 'O' ring
 
I know its said that the cold pipework had the same problem, but could excessive tempetures on the heating circuit be causing some of the breakdown of the plastics? Normally heat will cause plastic to become brittle over time?

I still agree with the rest that its a bad batch of fittings, only ever seen fittings fail when there not pushing onto the pipework fully (but then again thats not fitting failure thats installer failure).

I have to be honest I've never seen one disintegrate like that.
 
Pulled out some older hep20 recently and 2 of the grab rings had brocken down and were still holding until i undid the screwed end. Bit worrying now that ive spent several years using hepworth kit as i understood it was the best, polyplumb rules nowadays
 
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msw109 said:
As each one fails replace it with JG Speedfit and Speedfit inserts.
Click to expand...
polyplumb is cheaper than speedfit down my way:) and i gotta say a nice steel grab ring feels better than plastic ones omho
 
Travis perkins are now changeing from supplying Speedfit to Hep 20, Not that I buy much from Travis as its always double the price of anywhere else
 
hi had a 22mm hep couplin fail on me one week after installing 20/9/2010 lucky enough my son heard the water running down the wall and landing on the floor, after stripping down the fitting had noticed green grab ring had fractured and given way only leaving two grippers in place .have spoke to wavin [hep] and they are going to check fitting but apparently any grease on hands or spit used to lubricate fitting can cause failure .SO NOT IDEAL FOR USING ON SITE ONLY IN A NICE CLEAN LAB .I used hep lube on my fittings by shear luck, it was the only lube i had in my van so cant wait to hear result .no doubt it will be an installation fault .andy
 
these fittings are an absolute liability, i have personally had them go after 6 months ruining a nice cream carpet (i was chasing the builder for my retention) again it was the flimsy plastic grab ring that had given way. i know other plumbers who've had the same problems but its been more expensive than a carpet. didnt get my retention! thanks hepworth
 
toolstation do a white polypipe fitting with the same grabring as polyplumb no problems so far
 
We had a Hep20 22mm Union fail last night, it was sealing onto plastic pipe. The problem is the same as Dryerman's pic on post 7 - although there were no metal clips to be found (presumably these will be downstream somewhere).

I've contacted Hepworth and just waiting for a response - has anyone had any luck going down this route?

House was built in 2004, and is nearly all Hep20 - must admit Im now very concerned after finding this thread.

The pipe came completely out of the union - mains pressure into the loft for approx 30mins, so as you can imagine things are a bit of a mess!
 
Hi,
I'm glad I found this thread! Just about to put down an engineered oak floor over a few of these and hope not to have to take it up again. I fitted them about 6 years ago joining copper to plastic pipe for a rad in a tricky spot, and to be fair have not had a problem. I was actually searching online to see if a supplier could be found for the 'O' rings only as I assume they have a finite life-span. I'm wondering now if I should replace all the grippers? I have a mixture of green and white coloured grippers although the dimensions seem the same.

I should point out that in a sound (non-leaking) joint the water does not come into contact with the gripper and so the Chlorine should not be affecting them anyway. But it is hard to argue with the excellent photographic evidence provided.

My question is: where can I get original 'O' rings and possibly grippers for these fittings?

Thanks
 
The problem with Hep is that we're now on the 4th generation of it, meaning the previous 3 must have been flawed. I much prefer JG Speedfit on the rare occasion that I use plastic. Even then, I rate Cuprofit much higher with copper pipe for tight spots.
 
Agreed, and I think after reading this thread, I would be changing the joints alltogether and not just the O rings.

I had no idea the old hep failed so badly. Scary as like many others, I've stuck a fair few of these in peoples houses.

I mainly use Poly Plumb or JG when I'm using plastic pipe (which isn't that often).

I did try the latest Hep as it's white and the fittings are probably the least ugly on the market. After reading this thread, I'll never touch the brand again.
 
Not defending Hep in any manner as I believe they are big enough to stick up for themselves but I've came across a few "failures" like this and discovered all manner of faults including, no inserts at all, JG inserts used with Hep2o, green ring been demounted and fitted the wrong way round, no o-ring, green ring and o-ring incorrectly positioned (wrong sequence).. you get my drift.
Personally I think that if a fitting is demountable then its going to fail at some point, mainly because unless you fitted it the first time and no-one has fiddled about with it beforehand you don't know how many times its been taken apart to see how it works and then reassembled. This new generation of Hep2o can be demounted but the internals cannot be taken apart. I believe they have a 50 year guarantee on the fittings now as well.
But in saying that, I try and avoid plastic if I can as it looks really ugly and buckles when its hot.. and their new Hep2o fittings are easily taken apart when you can get to them, but try demounting a 22mm elbow under a floor from above...its not easy..
 
I don't personally think their new range is that easy to demount. I had no idea there was now a 50 year warranty on the fittings!

It's all well and good doing it on the pipe, but in normal circumstances, it's not going to fail, so why not put a warranty on it. Fittings is another matter.

It looks as though they will wriggle out of any responsibility anyway, so is their guarantee worth anything?

I've discovered as I'm sure we all have, old fittings that are incorrectly installed, as you say with no inserts and bits mixed up...and they've held up for years. The problem is, in the case of the OP (which is years back now) that his whole house was plumbed in a fitting that seemed to be faulty. That's a scary concept and would certainly worry me if it was my house.
 
just echoing what some of the previous posters have said - this is news to me, and I've put loads of the stuff in. shockingly bad. just waiting for the phone to ring now.
 
I agree with you Danny about the guarantee issue, most by manufacturers are worthless anyway. I've found the new hep fittings a pain to demount but then they brought out the new style "key" and its a lot easier, although when put onto copper its a struggle, especially in awkward places.
I rarely use plastic anyway but if I were to be using it more frequently I would probably use a permanent crimp type these days. Not as convenient I suppose but at least you will get relative piece of mind.
 
non demountable fittings like polyplumb with full stainless steel grab rings are probably the best to use imo.
 
Are those the same as the old Acorn fittings you used to get?
 
msw109 said:
As each one fails replace it with JG Speedfit and Speedfit inserts.
Click to expand...
You can't do this if it's Hep pipe and not JG pipe as JG will invalidate the warranty for using their fittings on another manufacturers pipe.
 
IMO the new style Hep fittings are a pain. Used them once and never again. Our merchants have stopped stocking them now in favour of polyplumb anyway due to lack of demand.

Will stick to polyplumb thank you very much.
 
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