Travis K
New Member
Hi everyone. In the past 20 years I have had only 1 call back on a bad solder joint. I am a general contractor and don't do much solder work anymore but I always worry about the soundness of a soldered joint.
Most of the time the capillary effect shows itself and I can clearly see the solder getting sucked in to the joint but on occasion the solder just appears to bead up on the lip of the fitting. This happened on 1 joint on my current remodel.
I used tinning Flux on these and I feel confident of all the joints except this one. It's a straight coupler that has the original pipe below it and a new short section going up to a 90 that then tapers to 1/2 inch and to a pex adapter. The bottom side of the coupler looks great and sucked in plenty of solder. The upper part never really felt like it flowed right. I did work from bottom up and am hoping that it sucked in plenty of solder and it's fine.
After it cooled for an hour I hooked up the pex and turned the water back on. I gave the coupler a few taps with a wrench to see if I could get it to spring a leak. It didn't.
I am getting ready to cover the wall with sheet rock and it will be covered with a tile wainscoting. I don't want this to leak.
Should I consider it good? Is there another way to test it? Or should I redo the section with new pipe? I do feel like I properly cleaned and fluxed the work before getting started.
Thoughts?
Travis
Most of the time the capillary effect shows itself and I can clearly see the solder getting sucked in to the joint but on occasion the solder just appears to bead up on the lip of the fitting. This happened on 1 joint on my current remodel.
I used tinning Flux on these and I feel confident of all the joints except this one. It's a straight coupler that has the original pipe below it and a new short section going up to a 90 that then tapers to 1/2 inch and to a pex adapter. The bottom side of the coupler looks great and sucked in plenty of solder. The upper part never really felt like it flowed right. I did work from bottom up and am hoping that it sucked in plenty of solder and it's fine.
After it cooled for an hour I hooked up the pex and turned the water back on. I gave the coupler a few taps with a wrench to see if I could get it to spring a leak. It didn't.
I am getting ready to cover the wall with sheet rock and it will be covered with a tile wainscoting. I don't want this to leak.
Should I consider it good? Is there another way to test it? Or should I redo the section with new pipe? I do feel like I properly cleaned and fluxed the work before getting started.
Thoughts?
Travis