NO: hot water is still considered potable and lead is prohibited under the water regs.
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9 years ago
Paging a real plumber
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9 years ago
In the UK "real" plumbers and heating engineers use materials in compliance with our national regulations: lead-free soft solder for potable water installations and either lead-free or lead-bearing soft solder for non-potable such as gas and heating system primary water circuits.
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9 years ago
As I understand, and please correct me if I am wrong, it is OK to use water heated in a combi or similar for cooking or drinking. If so, that would seem to require that type of HW to be done without leaded solder.
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9 years ago
But that's only for new installations. I'm sure there is water supplied through pure lead pipes still in some places and certainly the ones in this house use 1970's plumbing fittings.
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9 years ago
Quite right - it's essentially a tin-copper alloy.
BS EN ISO 9453:2006 Alloy 401:
Impurities, max. %:
Pb 0.1 Sb 0.1 Bi 0.1 Au 0.1 In 0.1 Ag 0.01 Al 0.001 As 0.03 Cd 0.002 Fe 0.02
Other
Cu 0.5-0.9% Sn remainder
... Has anyone written a Silverlight stream to PDF converter yet...?
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9 years ago
The main into this house is lead. Much of the plumbing was too when I bought it. Being a hard water area, it's not a problem.
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9 years ago
There is no lead in pencils shit-fer-brains.
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9 years ago
I'm still around having been brought up in a soft water area with leaded pipe. (as you were, I thought)
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9 years ago
Do you know if it was soft water which was "plumbosolvent"? And behaviour matters too. Were you brought up to ran the tap every morning to get rid of the "stagnant" water from the pipes? I was, even though we mostly lived in places where the cross-sectional area of chalk in the pipes probably exceeded the area of the water :)
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9 years ago
Yes that new interface sucks big time. Its easy enough to grab the meta file that is downloaded... just needs a way of rendering it.
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9 years ago
Thought so, based on the Johnson Matthey specs
I keep meaning to have a crack at it ...
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9 years ago
You should use a threaded joint designed to be disassembled for that job.
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9 years ago
Not much use once installed in a run of pipe work and you can't rotate the bit you need to disassemble. Also not so easy to thread standard copper pipe!
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9 years ago
If it's just been heated by the combi it's fluid category 2 which is fluid category 1 - wholesome water - whose aesthetic quality is impaired owing to a change in its temperature!
formatting link
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9 years ago
Tap connectors are threaded joints designed to be disassembled and reassembled. You don't have to thread the pipe.
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9 years ago
No, soft soldered joints almost exclusively. Soft solder is adequate for all the domestic plumbing and heating applications.
Joints are brazed in refrigeration systems and on medical gas systems. I don't think silver solder is used, I'd thought it was usually a copper/phosphorus brazing rod, so no flux required. I can't recall ever seeing silver solder used on construction sites, I think it has been displaced by better & cheaper brazing alloys in recent decades.
In France the joints are brazed using the same copper/phosphorus alloys. You get much more heat distortion of the joints. However, since they don't use acid self-cleaning fluxes, there are much fewer issues with (galvanic) corrosion of systems with copper tubes & steel panel radiators. Power flushing is virtually unknown in France.
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9 years ago
No, soft soldered joints almost exclusively. Soft solder is adequate for all the domestic plumbing and heating applications.
Joints are brazed in refrigeration systems and on medical gas systems. I don't think silver solder is used, I'd thought it was usually a copper/phosphorus brazing rod, so no flux required. I can't recall ever seeing silver solder used on construction sites, I think it has been displaced by better & cheaper brazing alloys in recent decades.
In France the joints are brazed using the same copper/phosphorus alloys. You get much more heat distortion of the joints. However, since they don't use acid self-cleaning fluxes, there are much fewer issues with (galvanic) corrosion of systems with copper tubes & steel panel radiators. Power flushing is virtually unknown in France.
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9 years ago
I'm fairly sure (not tried it) that if you subjected the joints to pressure or tension tests, the copper tube would fail before a soft soldered joint.
The only joints I've seen fail were mostly due to crap soldering and erosion of an elbow.
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9 years ago
Oh yes, just remembered. Pegler Yorkshire do gun-metal solder fittings which are joined with a silver solder alloy. I've only seen them used on the condensate return on steam systems in hospitals and process equipment. Steam systems are rare now due to insurance and inspection costs.
Some of my posts haven't appeared, so this may make more sense if the previous post shows up.
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9 years ago
I've seen a soldered joint pop out when a pipe froze. Without damage elsewhere. The joint appeared perfectly tinned.