Sweating copper

[thunderhead]

I was sweating some new water lines in and ended up with a couple leakers. I did about 50 joints and they all held but these two. I have drained the water, cleaned and fluxed but I can see the solder is not "sucking into" the joint. I think I have all the water out as I don't have any problems getting the copper hot enough to melt the solder. Any tricks to this? Thanks

 

[Reach4]

Oatey #95 tinning flux is nice, but I think you are going to have to take things apart to clean up pipes before you re-flux. A repair coupling will be useful where you have to cut pipe and put things back together. I am not a plumber.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Terry]

Any joint that leaks, needs to be either removed, or heated up, taken apart, cleaned up, refluxed and soldered again. Once a joint has leaked nothing can be done with it unless it's completely redone. Open the line while soldering to let hot air or steam escape, or the last joint soldered will have a pinhole leak in the joint.

 

[thunderhead]

Thanks for the replies, I will try it tomorrow.

 

[JohnCT]

Any joint that leaks, needs to be either removed, or heated up, taken apart, cleaned up, refluxed and soldered again. Once a joint has leaked nothing can be done with it unless it's completely redone. Open the line while soldering to let hot air or steam escape, or the last joint soldered will have a pinhole leak in the joint.

When I was first learning to sweat copper, I always replaced the fitting as I couldn't see any way of cleaning the internals enough to trust it. The outer section of pipe of course was easy to heat and wipe down before rescuffing and fluxing it.

John

 

[thunderhead]

I went out today, took the two joints apart, cleaned, fluxed and soldered them. 15 minutes and I was done. Yesterday I wasted two hours trying to fix them without taking apart. Lesson learned, Thank you.