copper pipe soldering question

[Stormin Mormon]

Damn straight! Use a big cotton rag or towel, and keep your body parts well away from that hot solder.

[nestork]

That's what I use too; just an old cotton or linen rag. Even a paper towel will work, but a nice soft cotton rag works best. You want cotton because plastic fabrics like acrylic or polyester will just melt on the hot pipe and make a mess.

And, for removing excess solder from a socket, I just take a piece of copper pipe, sand and flux the end of it, heat the socket and insert the pipe end. The molten solder inside the socket bonds to the pipe end so that when I pull the pipe end out of the socket again, there's just a nice tinning of the socket with no excess solder in it. (Then I just flux that tinned socket, sand and flux the new pipe end, insert the two together and solder normally.)

_*And,_ALWAYS_ALWAYS_ALWAYS_when_soldering,_keep_a_spray_bottle_full_of_water_handy_so_that_you_can_put_out_a_fire_in_a_gawd_awful_hurry_if_you_need_to.*_

[DerbyDad03]

There are trade offs. I'm replacing the faucet on a utility sink tomorrow. I'm also moving/replacing the compression fit shutoffs for the washer. The faucet is currently plumbed from under the sink with 3/8? copper risers soldered to 1/2? pipe.

I'm cutting the risers off, popping a couple of SharkBites MNPT fittings onto the 1/2? copper and using 1/2? to 1/2" braided supply lines to the faucet. I should be on my back under the sink for about 10 minutes.

Sure, I spent an extra $10 on the 2 SharkBites, but it'll save me the trouble of sweating fittings onto the pipe while lying on my back under the sink. To me, it's worth it. Cut, Push, Tape, Wrench, Done.

For the washer shutoffs, which are all above the sink, I'll be sweating all the fittings. Most of it I'll be able to do on the bench, then it's just a couple of tee fittings to insert it into the system.There are a lot more fittings for that job since I have to do the shutoffs, the fittings for the hoses, and make a 90° turn. SharkBites for all that would certainly be quicker and easier, but it would cost much more than I want to spend.

Like I said, trade offs.

[Unquestionably Confused]

Assuming you get the parts separated and wiped down (just enough to make sure the new couplings, tee's, etc can slide together with fluxing, what you should do unless you're 150% certain that ALL water is drained from the vicinity of your work is peel the crust from some white bread, roll the white bread into a ball and stuff it back in the pipe as far back as you can get it. That will remove all traces of water in the area of the joint and keep it dry and steam free while you solder.

Once the joint's soldered and cooled down, open up a tap down line (try not to let it run through the water softener or heater and turn the water back on to flush out the bread.

I've used that "trick" - taught to me by a journeyman plumber - for about 40 years and it has yet to fail me. Solid joint every time.

[Stormin Mormon]

bottle_full_of_water_handy_so_that_you_can_put_out_a_fire_ in_a_gawd_awful_hurry_if_you_need_to.*_

When torching near wood, it's OK to mix a drop or two of dish soap in a spray bottle of water, and wet the wood before you start heating.

A spray bottle of water NOW works better than a fire hose in 15 minutes when the FD arrives.

[Ed]

I'm glad you posted that for our not-so-bright southern friends.

[nestork]

Yes, but the QuickConnect fittings used for air have a long proven track record of reliability. Basically, every autobody shop or mechanic's garage that uses compressed air for their air tools is constantly making and breaking QuickConnect connections to change out the tool at the end of the air hose.

If I had to guess, I'd say that SharkBite fittings probably work on much the same principle. But, they still don't have the track record of reliability in actual use. The history of technology is full of examples of things that people thought should work but didn't. When the British company De Havilland started making the very first jet engine powered commercial airliner, the "Comet", their first customer was BOAC. And, not long after they went into service, these Comet airplanes started falling apart in mid-flight. There were pieces of Comet airlines falling out of the skies over Britain and over the Atlantic Ocean between Britain and America. No one knew why. Eventually, they found out that cracks were forming in the corners of the rectangular windows that they were putting on those birds. They change the window corners to a large radius curve to reduce the stress on the metal right in the corner, and that solved the problem, but not until hundreds of people had been killed in Comets with rectangular windows. We still have large radius curves at the corner of the windows on all commercial airliners now. A good track record proves it works and that counts more than a theory that says it should work.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Did I say Quick Connect? No. I said push fitting similar to Sharkbite.

Maybe they do. Been using this type of fitting for 20+ years.

The history of technology is full of

The fittings are round, unlike Comet windows.

[DerbyDad03]

I just moved/replaced the shutoffs for my washer. When I was out buying the sweat fittings I would need, I picked up a couple of SharkBite caps just in case I got stuck. I figured I could always just pop a cap on, quit for the day and get back to work tomorrow.

Well, low and behold, I had one Tee that was giving me trouble. I just couldn't get the solder to flow. I had already done about 15 fittings and this was the last one. 2 of the 3 openings on the tee flowed, the last one just wouldn't. I decided to cut the pipe into that fitting about 3 feet away to make sure the section I was working on was completely dry. I cleaned the fitting and the pipe, applied the flux, re-heated the fitting and the solder flowed perfectly. Since I had reheated the fitting I wanted to make sure it (and the rest of the 15 fittings) were OK. I pop the SharkBite cap on the open pipe and turned the water back on.

Everything was fine, so I slid the cap off and sweated on a repair coupling. The caps will stay with my plumbing stuff in case I ever need a temporary shutoff again.

[DerbyDad03]

...snip...

Depends on what?

[Ralph Mowery]

Where I worked we had thousands of them. Almost none failed. They were on air, oil and water lines. Most of the problems were with the plastic tubing.

[Pico Rico]

On whether Moe hands a nail to Curley to hang up a picture.

[clare]

Properly installed, the push fittings are good. Installed by an idiot, not so good. The idiot that connected the water to the coffee-maker at the office, tapping into the feed to the icemaker in the refrigerator did not do such a good job, and less than a week later we had a flood - over the weekend. When we got back on Monday morning water was running out the back door, several hundred square feet of engineered hardwood was warped and floating, and a LOT of wool carpet was well soaked.

Oh well, that's what HIS liability insurance is for.

[DerbyDad03]

I'm trying to understand your statement.

You say you'd trust them, perhaps even inside a wall, but it depends on their durability.

Doesn't that mean that you don't trust them...yet?

[DerbyDad03]

You are not making sense, at least not to me. Please explain with a little more detail.

Either you trust them for use inside a wall or you don't. First you say you'd trust them (perhaps) inside a wall, but add that it depends on their durability. "Perhaps" means you're not sure, doesn't it? What will it take to eliminate the "depends" and "perhaps"?

[clare]

I didn't say it did. That was someone else.

[nestork]

This back and forth over Sharkbite fittings is pointless.

Suffice it to say that just like every new technology, Sharkbite will have to prove itself.

I expect there was a time back in the 1950's that people were skeptical about copper water supply piping too. After all, threaded iron pipe was known to last 50 years or longer, and copper piping didn't have any track record to go on at all. There were undoubtedly skeptics back then that turned up their noses at copper piping.

[DerbyDad03]

I would never use a SharkBite on threaded iron pipe.