KP Texan
Marine Engineer
I spent the better part of the day laying out and sweating the copper piping for my new bath/shower valve and, quite frankly, I feel pretty beat down at this point. When the time came to pressure up the system, I had one pinhole leak at the top of my supply valve... talk about frustrating. My hat's off to you plumbers who do it on a daily basis.
Anyway, I think my first course of action tomorrow morning will be to go and get a copper slip coupling so that I can rejoin the pipe, since I will have to cut it to get the section out of the valve. Is a slip coupling considered an acceptable fix in a new system? Everything is sort of tied together, so I don't want to disturb the other parts of the system if I don't have to. I'm pretty meticulous about cleaning my joints with a pipe/fitting brush and applying flux to both the fitting and pipe, but what is the best way to do this on a slip joint? Seems like sliding the joint back and forth over the pipe would disturb the flux, or am I just over thinking it? Should I just clean it all up really well and then apply lots of flux, and also use some sort of reference marks to make sure the coupling is centered on the joint?
While I'm at it, I suppose I'll ask about sweating this brass ball valve. As stated, I always clean/flux everything really well. For the valve, I made sure that there was no water and that the valve was in the open position. I heated the valve right where the pipe sits inside of it and then applied solder as soon as it started flowing. This valve is in pretty closed proximity to the tub, so it's hard to get heat around all sides of it. My question is, do I pull the flame away completely whenever the solder starts to flow, or do I just back off on it a bit? I've never had a leak in a copper fitting joint but I've had 2 leaks now on these brass fittings...
Anyway, I think my first course of action tomorrow morning will be to go and get a copper slip coupling so that I can rejoin the pipe, since I will have to cut it to get the section out of the valve. Is a slip coupling considered an acceptable fix in a new system? Everything is sort of tied together, so I don't want to disturb the other parts of the system if I don't have to. I'm pretty meticulous about cleaning my joints with a pipe/fitting brush and applying flux to both the fitting and pipe, but what is the best way to do this on a slip joint? Seems like sliding the joint back and forth over the pipe would disturb the flux, or am I just over thinking it? Should I just clean it all up really well and then apply lots of flux, and also use some sort of reference marks to make sure the coupling is centered on the joint?
While I'm at it, I suppose I'll ask about sweating this brass ball valve. As stated, I always clean/flux everything really well. For the valve, I made sure that there was no water and that the valve was in the open position. I heated the valve right where the pipe sits inside of it and then applied solder as soon as it started flowing. This valve is in pretty closed proximity to the tub, so it's hard to get heat around all sides of it. My question is, do I pull the flame away completely whenever the solder starts to flow, or do I just back off on it a bit? I've never had a leak in a copper fitting joint but I've had 2 leaks now on these brass fittings...