I have a leak in my hot water tap for the clothes washer, it's coming from where the tap was soldered to the copper pipe coming from the wall. I tried to heat up the solder to remove it to replace it, put I could not get the solder to melt? I was using one of those blue torches, but could not get it hot enough, what was I doing wrong?? What would I need to get that tap off???
Thanks
Your problem is probably that the water in the pipe is sinking the heat from the torch. Try letting some of the water out of the pipe you are soldering so that it does not effect the heat. Sometimes this involves opening a lower faucet and the one you are working on so that the water level drops.
water in the pipe is sinking the heat
all water must be out of line and for practical purposes the connection must be taken apart completely, everything cleaned, fluxed, and resoldered
it will have to be completely drained before you can get it hot enough. even one drop of water will prevent proper heating. Best thing you can do is cut it off and replace the valve with a compression type valve.
sSteve,
By "blue" bottle I'm guessing that you are tyrying to use propane gas. The new "no-lead:"solders don't wotk well with this gas, it's not hot enough. As others have said, all water musy be drained from the joint. You need to disassemble the spigot so as to not damage the rubber parts.
Dave M.
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