Using bread to block pipes while soldering

I used a tip of pushing bread into a central heating pipe that I was soldering (it was constantly dripping) and it worked fine. Problem is, the pipe is still blocked. Any ideas on how to unblock it?

Reply to
kd
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What did you expect?? How will the bread ever get out of the system??

Reply to
Alan

Sticklebacks.

Reply to
Aidan

kd,

Recipe for bread pudding: Fill the heating system, add 1 litre of Fernox, 1 litre of noise reducer and the turn the boiler on to gas mark 6, boil for twenty minutes and... :-)

You could try leaving the water in the system for around twenty four hours to 'break' the bread down and then open the nearest drain valve, empty the system, connect a hose pipe to the cold water supply and then flush the system through at mains pressure - that should get rid of most of it.

Or, you could spend a few hundred pounds and get someone to pressure flush the system - ouch!

Brian G

Reply to
Brian G

Did you manage to create a 1" plug in a 15mm pipe using the whole loaf, by any chance?

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!! Love it. ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Reply to
BigWallop

You are supposed to use a little bit of bread to soak up any small drips, and it means a very little bit of bread. Jamming a whole slice in the pipe to stop a huge flow of water isn't a really good idea, and you may have caused more problems to the system now.

Take heart though, as the bread will dissolve down small enough to do no harm, but it might be in about two to three years time. :-)

Did you drain the system down completely first? Right down to the point of having very tiny amounts of water left in the pipes?

Don't do it again, and use the technique of heating the pipework along a good length so the water left in the pipe boils off. This stops the drips long enough to make a good solder joint.

Reply to
BigWallop

Could it be that you have an airlock, so that the bread cannot dissolve?

I've used this method sucessfully many times, but only on rising main lead pipes where the stop c*ck wouln't totally turn off. In these instances there was no problem with mains pressure pushing the bread out of the kitchen tap!

AWEM

Reply to
Andrew Mawson

I suppose cutting the pipe by the bread, remove it, and reconnect with a compression joint might do it.

Reply to
Keith Willcocks

It's not bread any more though, is it? It's toast.

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

kd another IMM handle?

Reply to
Grunff

too funny. Drill into the bread using nearly zero pressure on the drill. A hook shaped bit would be ideal, but a standard twisst drill shoudl do, but /dont/ press on it.

NT

Reply to
bigcat

connections

All I can think of for your to try, is to remove the fittings on either end of the pipe you worked on. Place you lips over one end, preferably the end furthest away from the bread wad, and then blow the shi........begeezes out of it.

The other method is to turn the system on but keep it cold, as in turn the pump on but not the boiler, and open the end of the pipe with the dough ball in it, in the hope that the pressure will be enough to blow the bugger out. You may need a bug bucket or a long hose to do this though, so be prepared.

The third method is to leave the system running hot until the bread has dissolved away, but his could take days, weeks, months or even years if you used a good loaf like Kingsmill. :-) But it will eventually clear.

Reply to
BigWallop

"Aidan" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

Introduced by the feed tank?

Must admit, I thought bread and dripping was something people ate...

Reply to
Rod

That's in the marmalade thread ...

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

snip

Me thinks you read the site wrong?

They where trying to tell you to use your loaf(not literally)

Reply to
ben

None of you are proving anything you know.

Reply to
Ian Stirling

Yeast ill worrying about that? Now, its getting late, time for bread.

NT

Reply to
bigcat

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