Yersmay
Writing, constructionDIY Member
Today I helped a friend repair a hot water re-circulation line under a slab in an apartment building he owns. Apparently, the pump ran 24/7 for years and now this line has leaks. The line is 3/4 inch soft copper. I've learned on this forum that joints under a slab should be brazed, not soldered. However, no one was much interested in this, so we went ahead and soldered. The main problem we encountered was that the cut end of the copper tubing was not really round and this made fitting a slip coupling on to it very difficult. We tried various methods of cutting -- sawzall... gently tightening a pipe cutter so as to not deform the pipe. The pipe cutter worked the best but generally this problem presented itself with agonizing consistency. Is there a tool that re-shapes the cut end of a soft copper tube to make it round again? Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.