How to shop for the right Sharkbite fitting? I can't even find them on their website!

[Marc_G]

Hi folks,

I've got a hobby project going on (don't we all?)... this one is relating to my aquarium. Essentially, I'm putting in an RO water system in my basement that will turn the liquid rock Indiana tap water I've got into water that will be appropriate for a South American soft water planted tank. It will involve not just the RO system but a system to temper the RO water with just a little bit of tap water to get me to just the right amount of minerals.

Anyway, doing what I need will involve adapting THIS to THAT at several locations. Most of this stuff is hardware store fare, nothing exotic, but planning to do it the best way involves me needing to understand what fittings I can choose from, to accomplish the job with the minimum number of potential fail points.

So, all I want is to be able to browse from a complete catalog of what is made. Sharkbite seems to be the main brand available here, but each store I go to has a different subsets of fittings, organized differently. What I want is to browse what's made, then I'll select the best ones for my application, and only then I will source it locally or online. This should not be hard.

The problem is, I can't find a catalog of the particular variety of fittings I need, even at the official Sharkbite site. For example, this one here:



When I got to the sharkbite site, this one is nowhere to be found. I tried searching for the product number on the front, or various codes on the back. No dice. Scanning the barcode brings me ads for other things, or the main sharkbite site, but not this product, which is representative of the product line I'm interested in. I've manually browsed the entire site without finding their line of these plastic (nylon probably) small diameter fittings.

Searching on Lowes/Amazon/Home Depot etc. brings lots of extraneous options that I can't filter down to just these simple plastic fittings in various sizes/threads/etc.

Just as one example, what I want to do is preferably go from my supply stop which has a 3/8" compression fitting (ending in male pipe threads) to the 1/4" OD RO inlet tubing the RO has, in one go. So, the minimal adapter would be a 3/8" female compression threaded to 1/4" OD push fit. Even better, would be if I could get this adapter with a shutoff stop incorporated. I've seen similar ones in this plastic fitting line that have valves and different size ends on them... but finding just the right one is driving me nuts.

Now, I certainly could go:
Supply 3/8" Compression to short length of 3/8" tubing to 3/8-to-1/4 adapter to 1/4" shutoff. But that's like 5 junctions, any one of which could fail catastrophically.

Does anyone have any insight into why I can't seem to find this line of plastic couplings on the website, and how to browse these things? This shouldn't be so hard...

Thanks all!

 

[Steve Shannon]

Hopefully this will help. It’s dated, but might give you a pretty good idea. I have purchased hundreds of feet of PEX and assorted PEX supplies from Supply House.
http://s3.supplyhouse.com/product_files/SharkBite-U890W100-Brochure.pdf

 

[Marc_G]

Hopefully this will help. It’s dated, but might give you a pretty good idea. I have purchased hundreds of feet of PEX and assorted PEX supplies from Supply House.
http://s3.supplyhouse.com/product_files/SharkBite-U890W100-Brochure.pdf

Thanks for taking the time to post this.

Interestingly, just like their website, there is no mention of their line of small plastic fittings in that catalog. The catalog/website has the stuff you need to build a house, not so much the stuff you need to put in an RO system despite the fact that every hardware store has a shelf full of these small plastic fittings.

Maybe I'll call them. They do have a phone number on their website.

 

[Steve Shannon]

Thanks for taking the time to post this.

Interestingly, just like their website, there is no mention of their line of small plastic fittings in that catalog. The catalog/website has the stuff you need to build a house, not so much the stuff you need to put in an RO system despite the fact that every hardware store has a shelf full of these small plastic fittings.

Maybe I'll call them. They do have a phone number on their website.

It’s probably a different catalog of theirs. Let me look some more.

 

[Steve Shannon]

Here’s their list of catalogs. Page 2 has their master catalog.
https://www.sharkbite.com/us/en/technical-downloads?f[0]=resource_type:Catalog

 

[Steve Shannon]

I have also used Watts https://www.watts.com/products/plum...connections/aqualock-push-to-connect-fittings

And it appears that a company called Lemoy has a pretty wide selection of 1/4 inch push connect fittings.

 

[Marc_G]

I have also used Watts https://www.watts.com/products/plum...connections/aqualock-push-to-connect-fittings

And it appears that a company called Lemoy has a pretty wide selection of 1/4 inch push connect fittings.

I may well go with a Watts or Lemoy product; thanks for the link.

It turns out the Sharkbite site doesn't list the retail products they sell through box stores like Lowes (the package I've got here is a unique Lowe's product, it turns out). I was able to narrow down the lowes site this way:

https://www.lowes.com/pl/Push-to-co...nt=617162671,4294965728,4294821384,4294821450
Also they were able to send me the John Guest stem products catalog which is pretty comprehensive too.

Thanks for all the resources! If I were in their marketing group, I would have a "fitting calculator" that lets one enter parameters and it spits out product number, specs, where to buy, and price, with an "ORDER NOW" button, but that's just me.

 

[Grog6]

Chech the sites that do water cooling for computers; they use a bunch of those.

 

[Sooner Boomer]

Have you tried looking at the Grainger's catalog (grainger.com)? They carry Sharkbite fittings. An alternative is to carry the pieces you have into a Grainger's store and having them help (assuming you have one fairly near).

 

[Steve Shannon]

Snip…
If I were in their marketing group, I would have a "fitting calculator" that lets one enter parameters and it spits out product number, specs, where to buy, and price, with an "ORDER NOW" button, but that's just me.

Parker appears to have an extremely large assortment of different push connect or “push connect to something else” fittings (many hundreds!). Their liquifit page has a configurator on it. It doesn’t work with my iPad and it’s too early to go fire up my computer but maybe this will help:
https://ph.parker.com/us/en/liquifit-fittings

 

[Marc_G]

I will go to their page later today.

Thanks for the help guys. I still think it's weird that shark bite doesn't make a simple catalog for these items but everyone else does. I will source my $10 with of parts from one of the alternatives!

 

[Marc_G]

My project is mostly done, and thanks to all who contributed. I learned a lot.

I wound up using a short length of 3/8" OD tube, and a common adapter from that down to 1/4", and it's fine. However, I did find the exact part I was originally looking for here:

https://www.johnguest.com/us/en/od-...ne-white/threaded-connectors/female-connector
They are usually sold in a bag of 10, not worth buying at this point, but good to know it's there.

The Liquifit configurator was also pretty cool, though it didn't have the exact whatsis I was interested.

Anyway, I went with a decent and field expedient solution, and can always upgrade to a better one if ever needed!