Water Softener Pre-Plumbed Prep

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yesngo

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My garage is pre-plumbed for a water softener (pictured below). It is a 1-1/4 pipe, which I'm planning on putting a shark-bite male adapter on each end. I'll attach the water softener bypass via stainless steel hoses. I have a few questions before I proceed:

1. What's the best way to clean the exterior of the pipe? It looks to be coated with paint and/or drywall texture.

2. The shark-bite fittings for the 1-1/4 pipe require a 2 inch clearance. I'm planning on sawing the pipe right before the elbow fitting, giving me 2-1/4 inch of clearance. If shark-bite fittings do not work for some reason, it seems like I will not have enough space to use the release tool. How worried should I be that the shark-bite fittings won't take? Would I be better off trying to sweat on the adapter (which I have no experience in) instead of using the shark-bite?

3. The stainless steel hoses I have are Holdrite brand, and they say the are flexible, but seem very stiff. Are they meant to be bent a fair amount without breaking?

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ditttohead

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Water will clean the pipe just fine, that is drywall mud.



The sharkbite should work fine.

The stainless flex lines bend without breaking.

 

yesngo

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I started cleaning it, and you're right, the drywall mud came off pretty easily. However, I found that on the underside of the pipe was a good amount of solder. I'm assuming the solder dripped down the pipe when they were putting in the elbows. My concern in that the solder is going to prevent the sharkbite fittings from forming a good seal. Is there an easily way to remove the solder without a torch?
 

Gary Slusser

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I would not cut the pipe, I would unsolder the elbows, which would allow removal of the excess solder the plumber didn't clean off after plumbing the fittings. And SS flexible (Falcon) is much different than SS hose. SS strand hose has a very small ID rubber hose inside the stranded SS covering. I would not use them.

To unsolder the elbows you have to prevent the heat (a cold water soppy wet rag wrapped around the tubing) from going into the copper tubing the elbow is on or you may have a leak due to melting solder on a fitting inside the wall.
 

Gary Slusser

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I would not cut the elbows off. I would unsolder them and then remove the excess solder you mentioned.

To unsolder you need to wrap a soppy wet rag around the tubing to keep heat from traveling back inside the wall to a fitting that may be out of sight and leak later.

Also, Falcon SS is much different than stranded SS hose that has a small ID rubber hose inside the SS covering. I would not use the stranded SS type.
 

ditttohead

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The double post is odd, it does it to me too sometimes.

You could cut the pipe close to the 90 and simply use the torch to remove the solder. Like Gary said, watch your heat transfer. Not only that, but many houses convert to Pex just inside the wall, heat and pex connections... not good.
 
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