How long after soldering

Great guide! I was wondering if there is a rule-of-thumb number for the pressure range a sweat connection can handle properly? Forgot to mention, the pipe is, in fact, empty no water.

Any suggestions? I finally abandoned all my pipe-sweating attempts and went and bought SharkBite. Never leaks either. I am refurbishing my bathroom amd would like to bury my water pipes for my toilet and sink in the wall.

Should i insulate them? Need some advise on seperaing a soldered connection. I think I have over cooked the joint, is that possible? A water soaked rag is a BAD idea. Water transmits heat from hot pipes WAY faster than a dry rag. What I generally do is stick a paper tower curled up down into the pipe and repeat it with new paper towels until I get all the water out. If the shower is above grade you can also open the water faucets at a lower level and the water should drain out with the exception of a little remaining water, sometimes, if you are soldering near the trap.

I just wanted to comment on getting water out of the lines. I had a master plumber come do some work to help me add a full bath to my basement. When he tapped into my water lines he was having problems with water in the lines and asked for some white bread. I oblidged and he used that to dry the lines. First bit of water was pretty nasty when he turned it back on and also it clogged a few of the aerators on my household faucet.

I had to remove them and clean them to allow water back through them. Overall the bread trick did work. The bread trick does work. He should have flushed the lines once he was done though. One thing to note about turning off the main water… Turn the water off on the most downstream valve you can. That way if that valve starts to leak over time you can just turn off the next upstream valve while you repair the leaking one. In my house I have three shutoff valves. The one in the yard, the one before the meter, and the one after the meter.

Have often wondered what was involved in sweating copper pipe. This article, and the comments, have been very informative. We recently did some plumbing using PEX. They all have slow leaks. Between that and some bathroom remodeling, this kind of stuff will come in handy. Thanks for the reply, Jeff. Most of them are in pretty bad shape. I figure if I cut the water off to replace one of them, I might as well get them all.

Thanks for the info on the frost-proof sillcock. I recently sweated some copper fittings together ,but only put flux on the outside on the outside of pipe not the inside. Water has been on for two days and no leaks. Is it going to last. Hard to say without looking at the joint. Hard to know.

I have a pinhole leak one foot outside my home. I was however, able to stop the leak by wrapping the line with electrical tape and placing two pipe clamps tightly over the tape. This stopped the leak completely, but is of course, only temporary. My question is, how can I reattach copper line to the black plastic line, once I remove the leaky copper portion?

It looks as though the copper line male end is simply inserted into the black pipe. What method is used in this case? Thanks for your response. S Sorry for getting off-topic but I had to ask!

I have a couple suggestions for anyone doing plumbing repairs. Install valves! Once in place you can isolate the tub from the rest of the house and turn the main back on. I assure you, there are few things that make a wife tough to live with like no hot water! If I have to repair or replace it, a valve goes in. It takes very little extra time once you have the pipes exposed so its really cheap insurance. Second is to never bury plumbing joints if you can in any way avoid it.

I ran into a leak in the upstairs bath and had to rip out an entire wall to get to it. Had the builder installed an access panel things would have been so much easier both coming and going.

I ended up putting in a tongue and groove lower wall as from the hanger bar down in the closet backing the tub with two sections that pull out for access. I think you do pretty well teaching or informing with this topic. But, how do you repair a joint that does leak?

Start over, just reapply more solder? What do you do? MAPP may be good for larger brass fitting…. Name required. Mail will not be published required. Hi, we're Ethan, Jocie, Kim and Fred. Over the last eight years we've documented hundreds of home improvement and DIY craft projects along with many tool and material reviews. Thanks for visiting! Share 8. Pin 2. Gene says:. January 13, at pm. Questions and discussions about toilets, sinks, faucets, drainage, venting, water heating, showers, pumps, water quality, and other exclusively PLUMBING related issues.

Please refrain from asking where to purchase a product, or business, pricing, or legal questions, or for contractor referrals, or any questions not related to plumbing. Keep all posts positive and absolutely no advertising. Our site is completely free, without ads or pop-ups. We do not sell your information. We are made possible by:. Q at the bottom if you don't want to read Kind of an odd Q, but this was my first time with the copper welding.

I had to reroute the water supply lines for my new shower and install new shower valve. I ended up doing 12 joints in all. It looked so damn easy that I didn't do any practice joints. The last few were looking good. Anyway I turned on my water and had one leaker. Small drippy leak. I tried to resolder a couple times, but it just seemed to amke things worse. Ah presto it doesn't leak anymore. My question is They aren't leaking and some of them aren't the prettiest.

If they aren't leaking now is it pretty safe to say they will hold for good? Plumbing has been my downfall in home improvement. Type L copper is used for domestic water lines, some area use Type M, thinner than L. The appearance of a DIY piping project is not as important as the integrity of the sweat joints which once fully pressurized is basically the only test. Wipe off the excess flux and don't worry about how it looks, being leak free is more important.

Unfortunately, looks have absolutely nothing to do with how good a joint is. But if they are not leaking now, I would not lose any sleep over it, because even if they are not perfect, there is no way to tell, and if you were to take it all apart and check the joints, who is to say the one you made when you put them back together was a good one.

Edited 1 times. OK, yeah with the water turned on I have no leaks I was just wondering if soldered joints fail very often even when showing no signs of leaking at first. The key words are "very often". The answer to that is no, but they do fail occasionally. As you discovered, a leaky joint cannot be repaired.

The link is only valid for 60 minutes. In conclusion, even though plumbing can be a bit scary if you are not an expert, it can sometimes be essential that you do the work yourself. It would also be practical and cheaper if you are experienced with soldering. It is extremely important that you know how long you need to wait before turning your water on after soldering do that all of your hard work does not go to waste.

Thankfully, after putting in the hard work to fix your plumbing issues, you can turn your water back on in just a matter of seconds and get back to using it like normal. One Project Closer. DIY Chatroom. If you liked this article, have a look at my other articles I wrote about the topic! To address some of the questions I frequently got asked or was wondering myself during my job, I started this blog. It has become a bit of a pet project, as I want to learn more about the details about welding.

I sincerely hope it will help you to improve your welding results as much as it did improve mine. Brazing is a method of joining two metals together using a molten filler metal. Brazing is different from welding, as none of the base metals undergo thermal melting. Instead, the joint is formed by Brazing is a process used to join metals and sometimes ceramics in which a molten filler metal called a braze alloy is used for joining.

This site also participates in affiliate programs with other sites. Skip to content. How Do You Harden Solder? Can You Solder a Wet Joint? Here is how to keep a wet joint dry for soldering: Turn your water off. You will want to do this by cutting off the main valve by your water meter. This will ensure that there is no chance of water flowing through the pipes while you are in the middle of making repairs to your plumbing.

Dry any remaining water. Using a dry cloth, wipe any visible water away from your working area. Get your supplies ready. Once you have everything dried, you will need to have all of your supplies sitting, ready to use. Prepare the pipe and fitting, and then place the fitting onto the pipe, making sure that everything is assembled correctly and tightly.

Apply heat to the joint.