Birkenstalkers

I am in a 100 year old house in DC that had galvanized pipes that had pinhole leaks. We replaced the entire basement with copper using the sharkbite connectors. They are a simple push-on design that can also be used with flexible line, but not in DC as that type of hose is not legal here. That said, inside is a white/clear plastic insert that you remove with a pair of pliers if you are using copper only. They worked like a dream and allowed us to turn on the main every time we wanted to check our work up to that point by using a cap. You buy a small plastic ring that allows you to take off any fitting by a simple push, so we were able to use the same cap every time and make sure we had no leaks. Depot's prices were good but we got contractor packs from a plumbing specialist. The downside was they had a 25% restocking fee. We bought what we knew we could use from them and made sure we used those first. We had no leaks anywhere and the plumbing was done in JAN 09.