I helped my neighbor replace an auxillary home water pump today. Inlet and outlet were threaded and needed several brass pieces to reduce size to connect to the braided hoses. One also needed a 90-deg piece. The small damper canister needed a reducer also. So we had a bunch of pipe threaded brass pieces to put together. We used about 3 layers of teflon tape at each joint. We ended up w/ 4 seeps so took it all apart and used 5 layers of tape and really grunted them tight. That got it down to 2 seeps. Took it all apart again, ran to Lowes for Oatey white which B Vila ranked as best for water. Put it all together and no leaks. We did see that two of the reducers were proudly marked 'china'. One thing to note is that the pieces all threaded together in the early stages before reaching the grunt it tight stage much more smoothly. I wonder if a lot of the advantage is due the better lube allowed by the Oatey lets us get the fittings tighter. It would be interesting to try a non-water soluble grease as a test but not on this job.
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