I installed a bidet in my new apartment. The bidet company provided me with a non-standard tee to put on the faucet supply line that supplies my toilet. The female side of the tee just has an o-ring. It has no ferrule, nor free spinning nut. All three sides of the tee, and all other parts of the system, are 3/8" piping (besides the 8mm flexible tubing that supplies the bidet).
When I followed the typical directions for dealing with compression fittings (hand tighten, then a quarter turn further), I got leaks. When I removed the tee to try to figure out what was wrong, it seemed like the o-ring had been unseated and forced down into the supply. That seemed like a case of over-tightening. I tried again, just hand-tightening, and this time got what seems to be a good seal. Twenty four hours after installation, not a single drop of water has come out of the tee.
But I'm nervous. The tee is just hand-tightened, meaning I can still wiggle it to and fro. It does not leak at any position within a quarter turn of where it's at, but I'm reluctant to experiment with it any further. I would like to know the following:
1. How likely is it that this setup will fail catastrophically in the future? I'm willing to accept some chance of failure, especially if it's lower than, say, the probability of me getting hit by a car or struck by lightning. But if the probability of failure is high, I want to know.
2. What can I do to make the situation more stable? One thing I thought of is potentially buying a ferrule to hold the o-ring in place, which might allow me to tighten the tee more without the o-ring slipping out of position.
3. Would you hire a plumber to look at this? Doing so would probably cost upwards of $200, which is pretty astronomical considering the cost of the bidet was like $20. The bidet is meant to not require professional installation, so I'm hoping the answer is no.
