Re: New way to mess up soldering copper pipe!
- From: "mk10" <mk10nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 18:29:52 GMT
"lbgary" <garyh82012@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1183132720.339051.92750@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I don't know if this is really new, but here goes: I have had a
plumber under my house for a few days now, doing copper repiping. When
he finished the other night, we tested the system by opening the main
valve, listening for leaks. There was a big one under a bathroom, so
big he thought he must have missed soldering one joint. Crawling back
to the problem area (now a large mud puddle), he tried to re-solder
the joint, and with all the water in the system, it was just too hard.
He went home for the night and we shut off the main. Next day he
discovered that virtually every joint he soldered the day before was
bad. He could just pull them apart. He threw away his solder and flux
and started over with new stuff, all the while thinking about what
could have gone wrong. First we suspected the flux had become
contaminated with something under the house, but the more he thought
about it, he remembered that he had used some cheap acid brushes from
Harbor Freight to apply the flux and he likes to continue to brush on
flux while soldering, to clean up drips and make the joint neater. The
brushes had a melted appearance, unlike the ones he normally uses,
which I assume are some kind of natural material, probably horsehair.
Our best guess at this point is that the brush he was using was
melting as he applied more flux to the hot joint, and the brush
material contaminated the solder-to-pipe bond somehow. Sound
reasonable? Gary Hastings
Your plumber is an idiot.
Of course you can't solder joints when they're filled with water, using the
lowest point in the system he should have completely drained the pipes
first--after this step any remaining amounts of residual water shouldn't
have been much of a problem (but if he continued to have difficulties then
he always could have resorted to using the "chunk of bread to hold back the
water" trick).
Why does this guy continue to apply flux while soldering?? The flux is
applied to the INSIDE of the joint where the solder gets drawn in. Smearing
flux on the outside is completely useless. If this guy spent more time on
thoroughly heating the joint and properly applying the solder rather then
wasting effort on the silly practice of spreading flux where it's not needed
then he wouldn't have had bad joints. And if he was merely doing this to
make the joints look pretty, he should have simply wiped the excess hot
solder off with a wet rag instead of using his flux brush which would most
surely get contaminated. And after the flux brush had melted after the first
few joints, why did he continue to use it in a similar manner on the
following joints.
I wouldn't feel very comfortable knowing this guy did the plumbing in my
house. Don't be surprised if in several months (most likely in the winter)
another joint or two just separates and blows out from his crappy soldering
work.
.
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