I don't do a lot of plumbing (and this hardly counts as plumbing) but I want to be really sure I get this right because water leaks are bad news.I have to hook up a water supply to a refrigerator. I have a braided hose with rubber gaskets. The fridge is 3/8" and fits the rubber hose no problem. The water supply shutoff valve is a 1/4" connection. I bought a compression fitting adapter (#877171, Lowes, pic related). I don't need the fitting/ferrule on the 3/8" size, because the hose connects. The fitting came with a white washer on the 1/4" end.Here's my two questions:1. What is that white washer for? Do I need it for the metal to metal connection?2. I know that teflon tape is never used for compression fittings (hose to fridge, hose to adapter). Do I need it for the adapter to hose connection? (The washer is hard plastic)Thanks in advance!
>>2941993Ugh, sorry, for #2: "adapter to supply connection" instead of adapter to hose connection
What the fuck kind of set up are you working with. Going back to the early 2000s I have never seen a refrigerator water line be anything other than 1/4" pex which takes 10 mins to set up.
>>2941993If you ever find anything plasticky or rubbery in a fitting, it's usually going to be the seal. You can replace it with a regular rubber gasket if you feel better about it, but it's probably designed to work well enough. There's nylon, PE, teflon, PP, all kinds of shit.You only ever have 2 types of seals, gasket or thread. If you have a fitting where you can tell that two machined flat surfaces are going to be in close contact or pressing against one another, and you have something plasticky or rubbery that goes inbetween, it's a gasket fitting. If there's no evident contact surface, it's a thread seal and you might want to wrap it in teflon.
>>2942059Thanks for the clear explanation; I just hadn't seen anything like it before.Since that's probably the seal and it's a compression fitting, I went ahead and did without Teflon tape. The hose/fridge and hose/adapter connections were fine and not leaking, as expected. The adapter/shutoff connection had a very small leak, so I did my best to try and tighten that connection a bit more (hard to get good torque in the outlet box). So far it seems like there's no leak, but I left a rag under the open shutoff to check for slow leaks before pushing the fridge back into its cutout.
>>2941993Am I the only one who uses teflon tape in all fittings, compession or not, just to keep the threads from corroding together?
>>2942090>picel >i put that shit on everything except for the other 75% of fittings that get loctite 545
>>2942108RectumSeal :D