I was helping Sarah’s brother Matt install a new water heater, which involved a few trips to Home Depot. We were lucky enough to be directed to Frank for help in getting parts to hook it up. This guy turned out to be awesome, he went with us around the store to gather up the parts and spread them out to show us how each one goes together. He clearly knew what he was talking about and answered all of our questions. I don’t know how much they are paying him, but he deserves a raise.
One of the parts that Frank showed us was the SharkBite push fitting. These made the job so much easier. Neither of us had ever sweated cooper pipes before, so being able to skip that entirely was a major bonus. Matt cut the old connectors off the end of the copper pipe, we pushed the freshly cut copper pipe one inch into the SharkBite fitting and that part was done. Although we had a few leaks that had to be resolved in other spots, we never saw the SharkBite fittings leak once.
I claim almost zero plumbing skills so I can’t say how this compares exactly to properly sweated copper connections. I will say this though, for me those SharkBite fittings worked as advertised, on the first try.