Forcing a copper pipe to move?

[Toller]

I have 3/4" copper hot and cold pipes running through the basement. 1/2" copper pipes run off them to below sinks and then run up to the sinks. The problem is one that is a 3' run from the 3/4" line to below the sink. It is now attached to a 3/4" board attached to floor joists. I want to move the 1/2" lines so they are even with the joists; that means moving them up about 1.5". There is no problem with the sink as it is connected to the

1/2" pipe with a flexible connector. I am concerned about stressing the 1/2" pipe or the connection to the 3/4" pipe.

Seems to me that copper ought to have enough flex to accomodate moving 1.5" over a length of 3', but I don't want to find out the hard way that I was wrong. Anyone with experience here? The pipes are about 25 years old, if the matters.

I want to put in a dust collector that requires 91", and I now have only

90"! Any place I can put it has problems with heating ducts or worse.

[Speedy Jim]

There is Soft copper and there is Hard copper. Yours is the latter.

If you try to put a bend in, the tube will buckle or a soldered joint will likely fail. Wanna risk it??

Cut the pipe and solder in an offset section. Jim

[barry]

Just for reference, you're talking "tubing", not "pipe." Pipe, whether steel, brass, stainless, whatever, has much thicker wall, size spec based on ID, and can be threaded with std pipe thread on the outside. Tubing is made such that the OD is a close fit into std tubing fittings for reliable sweating of joint.

Copper can be annealed (soft) or un-annealed work-hardened. Note that some arrives as straight sections, some as coil. Guess which is annealed, and which is not.

J

[Charles Schuler]

I can't guarantee it, but 1.5" over that length should be OK.

[Pete C.]

Cut and re-fit. When I replumbed my mother's house years ago it got the usual trunks parallel to the main beam. Each T off the trunk angled up at 45 degrees with a short stub to a 45 degree fitting to bring it parallel and then a short stub to a ball valve. Gets the branch line and valve within the joist cavity and does it with a little less bend and loss of water flow.

Pete C.

[Bob F]

It might work. It might not. You are going to stress the joints badly. The damage that would result if they give would be way more than the cost of a couple fittings and a little soldering

Bob

[mm]

Seems to me that it doesn't.

Yeah, when I was in college, the hot water was too hot to tolerate, so I bought a mixer, that attached to the hot and cold and had an outlet in the middle. But the faucets toed in a bit, and it wouldn't stay attached if they didn't point straight ahead. So I twisted them 10 degrees, and everything was fine. For a month or two. Then one started dripping. I cracked the copper pipe.

(It was 7PM when I noticed the leak. First I put a bucket under the drip, but after I had to empty the bucket in an hour or two, I put a wastebasket upside down and the bucket on top of it. Then I ran a piece of tubing from the bucket to the toilet, which was nexst to the sink. The tubing was too short, so I added a thick soda straw. I started it siphoning, and when the bucket was near empty, the siphoning slowed down. When the bucket got more full, the siphoning sped up. I was able to leave it like this for 2 weeks and didn't have to do anything to empty the bucket or restart the siphon.

Oh yeah, I tied a wash cloth onto the leaky part so that I wouldn't hear the water dripping into the bucket.

I'm sure the plumber would have come much sooner if I had told the landlord it was a real problem. But it wasn't a problem. The sink worked fine too.

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Not a good idea. Do the job right and add a section and re-solder. That tubing is more rigid than you think.

[Jon G.]

You're right, just grab a big ole pry bar and have at it. Let us know how it turns out.

[Toller]

If I needed a pry bar I wouldn't be asking. It will move without much force.

[Al Bundy]

"Bob F" wrote in news:vaudnQd5D9HdPunYnZ2dnUVZ [e-mail]:

Correction: ...WHEN they give AND you are not home

Al Bundy

[Toller]

I don't care about the material, that is just a couple dollars. I just hate working on old pipes; they take forever to clean.

But it beats the hell out of having something break.