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Anyone familiar with plastic welding/soldering?

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Ian.M:
Anyone care to bet on how long that will hold up before the locked in stress + thermal cycling splits the reducer cap?

Red Squirrel:
Yeah could be an issue, time will tell.  I am a bit worried that any residual water inside freezes if I leave the fitting outside in winter, but I'll see what happens.  This will eventually be in a climate controlled building so I will take them inside for this winter.   

If this fails, then I will probably go back to the welding route.   These are the closest fittings I can find in Canada that fit.  There is a few on Amazon that would work but not sure I trust that for potable water (China seems to like adding lead to everything), and they are very expensive.   These were not that cheap either though, the full order came up to around $100 as the site I got it from charges like $40 for shipping.

But yeah, time will tell I guess. 

IDEngineer:
Do you have a proper way to simply seal off the existing port? Like a cap that came with it, intended for that purpose?

If so, you could just seal off that port and cut your own, in the (smaller) size you apparently want anyway. Most larger hardware stores carry fittings meant for this purpose. They have a "normal" end in whatever size/thread you want, and a "bulkhead" end that typically has a flange, 1-2 o-rings, and a backing nut. These are meant for installation on metal, plastic, etc. nominally flat surfaces to give you a liquid port. If you drilled the new hole near the existing port you might be able to reach through the port to install and hold the backing nut. Or perhaps there's another opening somewhere.

Just letting my brain run wild with ideas. Might not be practical if you can't reach the inside surface to hold the nut while you turn the fitting to secure things. But if you can, this would give you total control over everything: Choice of size, choice of thread, choice of fitting material, choice of adhesive/sealant if you wish, etc.

EDIT: Here's a photo of what I'm talking about. A quick Google search revealed lots of options in brass, stainless, PVC, you name it. Some with integrated valves, some without.

Red Squirrel:
Yeah there is a cap that came with it, but I don't think it's rated to work at pressure.  It will leak if I open the valve.  It's meant to be a dust cap only.  I suppose if I found an O ring to fit inside it would MAYBE work though, but it does not have a lot of threads.  But yeah I had thought of that too with the bulkhead fitting. Glad I know what it's called now, I had that in mind but was not sure what to search for.

I do want to try to find a source to buy fittings and even pipe in larger sizes though, as eventually it would be nice to actually do 2" service at least within the main water treatment building, and then do 1" service to the buildings. 

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