No, this is not a hooker topic.

I've run into badly corroded galvanized nipples 3 times in the last 6 months while putting in new kitchen and bathroom faucets. The galvy nipple appears to be the weak link in the deal. They can be hard to get out, I learned from a real plumber about using reglar old easy outs, big ones, to get a corroded nipple out.

This while the same guy was helping me with a kitchen faucet. I had gotten a late start on a Sunday. It's with a new client, an 60ish widow who owns 5 or 6 large rentals, she keeps gushing about how lucky she was to find me. She pays top dollar and I want to keep her happy.

This is in an older bldg., it had one of the old wall mounted faucets, w/ no lower shutoff valves (PITA), it was a 5 unit apartment house, and I had water shut off to the entire bldg., of course.

The nipple was no longer viable, too corroded to seal at the faucet, it just did not want to come out, and I was approaching panic mode. I called my sorta plumber buddy who happened to be having dinner with his boss, an actual plumber. He offered to come over and help me, and as it was 7 pm Sunday night, I happily put aside my macho pride and said "Hell yes."

We finally got it out, had to cut a channel in it using a skinnied up sawsall blade held in a vise grip (got to be careful no to go all the way down to the threads or you can bung up your seal with the new nipple.) Then we banged it out, collapsing it on itself, or rather he did, with me holding a prybar behind it so it wouldn't bounce around. We got the hot water side out with the large easy out. We took out both so as to put in new brass nipples on each side. Disaster averted.

The question for me is: is the brass really a good idea? I mean, I know you don't join steel and copper together, as galvanic corrosion will eat the steel away in no time. When joining old galvy pipe to new copper, you use a di-electric junction. A 6 inch length of brass pipe is supposed to be good enough also.

These corroded nipples have got me wondering. Brass is part copper, perhaps galvanic corrosion still takes place, just much slower. The elbow in the wall that the nipple is screwed into has never been anywhere near as badly corroded as the nipple in my experience, so it's not just age that causes it.

I have this awful feeling that the brass nipple will just result in someone having to rip half the wall out someday in order to replace the galvy elbow corroded by the brass nipple. Who knows, might be me faced with that headache.

Of course, by that time, new copper throughout might be a good idea, but in a multi story building, that's way expensive.

Anybody know? I haven't had much luck with searching the web.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K