Mark clark
New Member
Just built a large manifold for a house I'm plumbing.its made all out of 3/4 copper and "American Valve" (aka Lowe's)brand valves.9, 3/4" valves and 2, 1/2 valves. All sweat to sweat connection.took about 18 hrs to design and build this to get it ready to sweat. I took extreme precautions in final assembly before sweating. Everything was thoughly cleaned and fluxed. I did all the sweating everything went really well, no overheating or flux burn. Heating of the valve was done by the male part of the pipe with little if any direct torch heat to the valve it's self. Get everything cleaned up and put 90# of pressure on to leak check. 7 of the 9 3/4" ball valves and both 1/2" ball valves leaking from the factory seam not a single leak on any sweat connection.very frustrated I go back to Lowe's get replacements for the the leaking valves go back to my shop tear apart the manifold as much as I have to and replace the valves. Reclean, reflux, reassemble I'm ready to sweat it back together.i switch to propane from mapp for fear of overheating. I use the absolute minimum heat in order to get the joint to sweat.no direct heat to the valve no flux burn minimum temperature to sweat. Put 90# back on the manifold 3 of the 3/4 and both 1/2" valves leaking from the factory seam. I have sweated over 500 ball valves in the last 18 years and only 1 time have I overheated a valve to the point it leaked from this seam. These have to be the worst quality valves ever made. It has cost me over ten hrs of labor to do all the repairs on this manifold caused by theses valves. Very frustrated. I will never use the American brand valves again. Wish I would have used Watts from the start and saved myself a ton of frustration. I don't know if this is a bad batch of valves or what. Anyone else had issues with these valve's? Pulling my hair out trying to figure out what went wrong!!
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