yannick
New Member
Hi,
Recently bought a house and replacing all the plumbing from PolyButylene to copper. I'm now to this but I enjoy this kind of work.
My underground water line is soft copper 3/4 inch. Since the main water shutoff was letting water in the system even when shut, I decided to cut it and replace it with a lead free 3/4 inch ball valve.
I had to practice a few times. So I soldered 5-6 times two ball valves and started getting good. Cut them open to see if I melted the inside PTFE seats as well, but I didn't.
Now I soldered a brand new valve. However I wonder if I made a mistake in the process. I initially got nice coverage all around, altough there was excess solder at the back of the valve (the valve is 1 inch from the wall so I'm blind from that angle, have to use a fire blanket as well).
Anyhow, my initial result was quite good.
But then me being me, I wanted to wipe the excess solder so I reheated the valve 1 min. after applying the solder and stopping heating it, but couldn't get it hot enough because when I re-ignited my torch, the fire was too low.
So I somewhat decided to call it a day, let it cool completely to room temp, but then thought it wasn't good enough. So I reheated the joint again to wipe excess solder and this time I could do it successfully.
However, I wonder if it was a mistake. Could re-heating a valve/joint 15 mins after letting cool off completely weaken the joint more than anything else?
I see that, at a place around the joint, the solder is less "shiny" than it initially was. Otherwise though, I still have nice coverage all around.
I assumed because the copper and brass were already sweated with solder, I couldn't really weaken anything... Is it wrong?
Recently bought a house and replacing all the plumbing from PolyButylene to copper. I'm now to this but I enjoy this kind of work.
My underground water line is soft copper 3/4 inch. Since the main water shutoff was letting water in the system even when shut, I decided to cut it and replace it with a lead free 3/4 inch ball valve.
I had to practice a few times. So I soldered 5-6 times two ball valves and started getting good. Cut them open to see if I melted the inside PTFE seats as well, but I didn't.
Now I soldered a brand new valve. However I wonder if I made a mistake in the process. I initially got nice coverage all around, altough there was excess solder at the back of the valve (the valve is 1 inch from the wall so I'm blind from that angle, have to use a fire blanket as well).
Anyhow, my initial result was quite good.
But then me being me, I wanted to wipe the excess solder so I reheated the valve 1 min. after applying the solder and stopping heating it, but couldn't get it hot enough because when I re-ignited my torch, the fire was too low.
So I somewhat decided to call it a day, let it cool completely to room temp, but then thought it wasn't good enough. So I reheated the joint again to wipe excess solder and this time I could do it successfully.
However, I wonder if it was a mistake. Could re-heating a valve/joint 15 mins after letting cool off completely weaken the joint more than anything else?
I see that, at a place around the joint, the solder is less "shiny" than it initially was. Otherwise though, I still have nice coverage all around.
I assumed because the copper and brass were already sweated with solder, I couldn't really weaken anything... Is it wrong?