Copper pipe joining ... (Without a sleeve)

[Gordon Henderson]

So have been doing a bit of plumbing recently to install a new hot water tank and tidying up a lot of old stuff leftover from what appears to be many years of job on job on job ... And I've found quite a few pipe joins that are made without a sleeve - they have expanded one ond of a pipe just enough to push the next section in, then solder.

Is this a technique of olden times as I'm not sure I've seen it before.

It does seem to make for a neater join with only one soldering required as opposed to both sides of a sleeve... Is there a magic tool to expand the end of the pipe without it splitting?

Cheers,

Gordon

[dennis]

8<

[Andrew Gabriel]

It's an expanded pipe joint. They never were that common with water plumbing, and with time being money nowadays and the common fittings costing peanuts, verses the time spent expanding the pipe and the thought you have to put into doing it before installing the pipe, it's well out of favour now with regular plumbing. Still used with aircon pipework though.

Yes, a tube expander.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

It was certainly more common with the softer copper tubing of old.

Yes. But IIRC pretty expensive.

[Gordon Henderson]

Guess I didn't google for the obvious then !!!

Thanks (And to denis@home)

£210 for the gadget... Shiny new toy... but I think I'll stick to sleeves!

Thanks,

Gordon

[Cicero]

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I've got the hand-tool version. It has two sliding formers (15mm + 22mm) and works a bit like a slide hammer with a hammer. It's hard work and not really worth the effort most of the time.

Cic.

[ericp]

A lot of old plumbers did it. I made the tool for 15mm pipe in an electric drill years ago for curiosity.

It was simply to save on the cost of fittings and took only a few seconds to do.

It did make really nice elegent joints as well.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

As I said it was easier with the older soft copper pipe. Annealing modern stuff would probably help. But as you say probably not worth the bother.

[PeterC]

and 1 fewer joint per, er, join.

[geoff]

In message , Gordon Henderson writes

Yes, its not what a professional would use

The proper (cheaper ones) are hammered home to expand the pipe to create a sleeve. I used one when I last replaced my boiler

[NT]

Now that we all have SDSes, I wonder if the method might be worth revisiting.

NT

[Andrew Mawson]

When I bought my last house some years back I inherited masses of 1" pipe in good nick, which encouraged me to turn up on the lathe a simple 'wack it with a hammer' pipe expander to convert to metric sizes. Worked a dream. I made it stepped to accomodate 28mm 22mm &

15mm - still have it somewhere - only really applicable on longish pipes to get the 'back inertia' when you thwack it!. Anneal the pipe well and you get a good neat joint.

AWEM

[Bill Wright]

Was the inheritance a coincidence?

Bill

[Andrew Mawson]

message

Previous owner of the house was the heating contractor who fitted out Heathrow term 3 when it was built, and had used 1" copper in nice long lengths all over the house that bore a remarkable similarity to that at the airport!. When I re-boilered and relaid out the heating system (in perhaps 1984) the heavy guage Imperial copper was far to good to chuck - anyway the budget was VERY tight, just like me

AWEM