Plumber's tape isn't just for pipes - found that out the hard way

I was finishing up a custom shower build in a home outside Portland and tried using plumber's tape to seal a drain connection. Turns out the stuff is not rated for the kind of heat a hot water line puts out. It melted and gummed up the threads so bad I had to cut the whole pipe out and replace it. Cost me an extra $80 and half a day of work. Has anyone else found a use for that tape that actually backfired?

3 comments

3 Comments

angela_grant2mo agoMost Upvoted

Oh man, that's brutal. Did you have to completely tear into the wall to get that pipe out or were you able to access it from the shower side? I'm wondering if you could have saved it by scraping all the gunk out with a wire brush and some solvent before giving up on the whole thing.

emery191mo ago

I gotta push back a little on @annas87's garden hose story. Garden hoses are low pressure and cold water, so tape crumbling off is more about old rubber or cheap plastic than the tape failing. For hot water lines though, you're right that standard PTFE tape isn't rated for it. But I've found that the yellow or pink gas-rated tape actually handles heat way better and won't melt like the white stuff. If you had used that from the start, you probably wouldn't have needed to cut anything out. Next time try burning the melted tape off with a torch instead of scraping it cold. That gum turns to ash and wipes right off.

annas872mo ago

80 bucks and half a day is rough, I once used it to patch a garden hose and it just crumbled off in a week.