Hope you enjoy! Live on Locals tonight! 🚨 *_Livestreams|Behind the Scenes|Exclusive content_* plumberparts.locals.com/support/promo/PLUMB1M 🛠 *_AMAZON TOOL STORE:_* www.amazon.co.uk/shop/plumberparts 🥾 *_10% Off my workboots + workwear Use Plumberparts10:_* elwoodworkwear.co.uk/?ref=Plumberparts10 👓 *_10% Off Safestyle Sunglasses Use PLUMBER10:_* safestyle.com.au/?ref=PLUMBER10
They say a bad workman blames his tools. I used to believe this until I attempted a batch of soldering on my central heating. I did all the things in this vid by the book and it still leaked: that's THREE attempts all going wrong and boy was I tearing my hair out(I still had some in those days). Then my wife said "maybe it's your torch?" "No it can't be, I've had this for years and it's never let me down!" But after the fourth failure, I was desperate enough to pop round to B&Q and treat myself to a new torch. Instant success. The moral of this is that sometimes it actually isn't your fault. Check your gear.
Number 1 rule to having solid clean solders is having flame control and understanding the flame. For example, soldering 15mm you only need a light soft flame which will slowly draw your solder in rather than having a massive out of control flame which will melt the fitting and flux and you'll end up with solder all over your fitting.
Make sure you check what's behind the fitting your heating. If there's something flammable or heat sensitive,you could buy a heat shield or cut one of those foil baking trays in half and it'll work just fine. You may be able to layer aluminum foil but haven't tried that.
I used bread for years when soldering pipes with water in and always worked a treat , until on a job one day and the only bread on site was called Warburtons best of both! god knows what was in it, the joint soldered great but even after 2 days with the heating running the bread did not break up! had to pull the thing apart and the bread had turned to a sloid plug! just imagine what it does in your gut!
Being a very experienced and master plumber myself, I never, ever use MAPP gas to solder. I only use it to loosen fittings that other barbarian Plumbers overtightened fittings with! It has oxygen in it to help make the heat / flame quite a bit hotter than just propane and the oxygen also gets into the solder and the copper which is not a good thing. Edward H. - “Integrity, plumbing, septic and drain“ out of the Clinton, CT USA area.
Thank you. this is good to know. So, what should I use? I am a newbie to this. Buying new kitchen taps: Want to solder in copper tails to copperpipe under kitchen sink. TIA
Dude, you are so full of s**t. MAPP is methylacetylene-propadiene propane, hence the name. It also hasn't been available in North America for years. There's certainly no "oxygen in it". Sounds like you're "very experienced" in blowing smoke up people's asses😂
Sure, if you're going to correct yourself after and as he just said don't make these mistakes as they'll cause damage to yours and peoples property which he's right so your feel good positive vibe comment is contradictory to doing a good job on things like this.
@@YeahNoTellTheTruth i mean if you're gonna make a mistake on purpose you sure as hell ain't gonna do it in someone else's house. nothing contradictory. Also, nobody has ever discovered anything just by being born for it. Even the inventors got it wrong the first few (thousand) times.
Thank you, this video was invaluable. I was able to replace a leaky delta 600 series valve. We cut the old valve off at the body, sweated the little pieces off the pipe and trimmed the pipe to fit the wider valve body. We did it in 1 try thankfully. That brass takes a lot more time to heat up than that copper pipe does, we had to use a license plate heat shield when working in the wall.
10:30 Another way to deal with water in the pipe is to take the lid off a kitchen/bathroom spray, put the tube down the pipe as far as possible and use it to spray/suck the water out.
Good tips I enjoyed it. I am watching these as I have to do a pretty, decoration copper install for an airline. (3/4) I would like to see a demo about getting it right when you are up a ladder, hard against the ceiling and have to turn it into a T piece but you are 18 inches from the corner where you turn 90. Using brass wall Battens in brick. And after you are done the client is using a microscope to look at your joins.
Love the video !!! But what about the wet rag and leaving the other end open ? I always got taught if you are soldering an elbow to flux both sides and be ready to solder both pipes going into the fitting rather then leaving none side open.
Had to learn soldering and compression joints on 15mm copper when we came home one day to find bursts in the washer & hose feeds in the garage. It was around 40 years back so no internet to fall back on. And yes, mistakes were made! Probably the very first joint I tried to do, I was stood there with the blowtorch for AGES, wondering why the darned thing wasn't working, why the joint hadn't sealed. Not knowing, I'd turned the torch on high and the solder must have drained out within the first few seconds. Got the hang of it after that but, frankly, would use plastic for 95% of the stuff I'm likely to do nowadays.
Great video thanks. Which kind of solder do you use for copper to copper pipe? tin- lead or free leed solder used in electronics could be used? Thanks 🙏 so much!
Great video, Im not an plumber but after cleaning the copper you shouldn't really touch the area as natural grease from your fingers will contaminate the copper but these new acid fluxes are pretty good these days. Water boils at around 100C and for solder to melt it needs a few hundred degrees so if theres any water or steam you cant clear you will stuggle like hell! Ive used a vax vacuum cleaner in the past but if that fails a Compression joint or if you trust push fit is the other option. Thanks for your great videos.
On many jobs I see the big lumps of solder at the bottom of the fitting where the previous plumber has used too much solder. After every joint I do I wipe the joint with wire wool as its there anyway from cleaning the pipe. This removes any excess solder and leaves the joint smooth .
If you are doing 50 joints or so you don't always remember to wipe everyone. As long as it doesn't effect the integrity of the joint no worries. The bigger issue is to go back and clean all the flux off so you don't have green pipes. I use a couple of spoonfuls of baking soda with water and wipe all the copper down not just joints. Way the grumpy old guys taught me!
There is a quick cheat for soldered fittings, using electrical solder with the flux already in it. Although more expensive, I use it with cleaning flux and it works on all copper fittings. The cleaning flux is now not so easy to get hold of, a bit toxic I think. If you want to master the end feed fitting, the ones with no solder ring in them, try electrical solder with everything cleaned up beforehand and a bit of flux if you are a novice. Works really well.
@@videogalore Modern stuff is lead free, just tin and a little bit of other stuff in it, so it is actually water safe. The old solder before ROHS is tin lead alloy, 60% lead and 40% tin roughly, depending on brand. But if you are doing refrigeration pipe MAPP gas is the thing, and you are actually melting the copper slightly, and the gas is cleaning the oxide off the surface before the silphos rod is used to weld the parts together. Have used it a bit on water pipes, and with this you do not even need fittings if you have the AC tools, as that allows you to make the one side expand ( for water pipe that is hard drawn first heat it to make it soft annealed copper again) to make a fitting that is way more than capable of handling water mains pressures. Worst though is when you find old imperial size copper pipe still in use, and want to mate to modern fittings, which will not work, so MAPP gas and weld the new tail onto the old pipe it is. That is in old buildings, with pipe in the walls, and you need to fit a new tap there, and not remove 20m of plaster to do it.
@@SeanBZALeaded electronics solder is 63/37 (true eutectic) or 60/40, which is close enough and was slightly cheaper back when leaded was king. The first number is the tin, so 60/40 is 60% tin and 40% lead.
I was looking for tips but this was very basic. The only thing that really allows to me is not using too much solder. I'm not a pro. And my solder joints don't look like a pros. But they don't leak. And they're in my basement. To clarify good video if i had watched it like 20 years ago.
Do you recommend having saw dust and used paper towel in the area behind the soldering flame? 😂😂😂 are you sponsered by local fire brigade! Love to see one on connecting chrome pipe to copper for towel rads.
You used the right amount of solder the first time. The solder does go all the way round in the pipe. Also when soldering you should not move the blow torch all around the pipe it is better and safer to hold it in one lositiion and not move it. The pipe is going to get incredibly hot so there is no need to move it around.
Heat the joint, pull the flame away, touch some solder to the joint and it will start melting when it is hot enough... Then it's ready...Touch the flame back again as needed...if ya leave the flame on the joint when you put the solder on it, you're just melting the solder and that's what causes drips and buildup.. also blue canister propane is just fine for residential water lines.. don't actually need MAPP... it's over kill.. the time difference to heat copper between the two is not that substantial..plus ya gotta have a dedicated MAPP nozzle.. I'm about saving money, not buying thr newest, fanciest tools and equipment... Ya just gotta be smarter than the task at hand.. thanks though..
If I want to make some sweeping turns in copper, can I insert some soft copper in the middle of a run of hard copper pipe? Is there any rule against that?
Brasso....Of course, I thought that's where you got the inspiration for your RU-vid image from. Good stuff. After watching that I feel Im a pro already.)))
What I do when soldering a joint is, immediately after the solder goes in, wipe the joint round with a wet or damp rag. This not only removes any drips of solder, but if there are any pinholes in the solder wiping it will fill those pinholes before the solder sets solid.
I’ve heard this is not advised because that will cool the solder down too quickly and could create micro fractures, sort of like a windshield breaking in the winter.
You didn't deburr the pipe. My father taught us plumbing. He did lead casting, oakum and lead bell end fitting sewer piping, and all kinds of odd old work that no one does today. I have his old tools and all of the hands on experience. We call the blobs of extra solder on the bottom of a sweated joint, a "Turkey Nut" or "Turkey Nuts". We used Flitz, Brasso and some polish for stainless steel firearms. I just blow the pipes out with compressed air. Dad would stuff bread in the pipe. It clogs fine screens in faucets and holes in shower heads. Freezing the pipe required a CO2 fire extinguisher, or a can of refrigerant for a car and it is way too expensive now.
I've just upgraded some 22 to 28, with even a couple of 35mm tees. First time soldering larger pipes, was nervous but got there in the end. Plenty bird poop, snots, 2 leaks - got there in the end! Doing it again I'd flux 1 joint at a time in stead of a few, but otherwise quite happy for a pen pushing DIYer 😊 I learn all my stuff here, thanks for helping us! Oh PS, for very dirty pipes, a bit flux before cleaning will bring it up nicely!
Thank you for making a nice easy list on these! I'm a home handyman and can do almost anything to code, but plumbing scares the living **** out of me for how bad it can go if not done right. Trying to build up my confidence to do a small job replacing a hot water heater and this definitely helps! :)
I always have a problem with lead free solder. That goes for electrical soldering as well. I understand if it is on central heating you are still allowed use lead tin solder but not on drinking water pipes.
I'd say if the soldering is not working then its probably - there is not enough heat , possibly because the water hasn't been drained from the system - OR the copper pipes have not been cleaned properly .
@@eckypooh50Yes, the “L” is there for a reason: the artificial re-latinization of a word that didn’t actually have an L when it entered the English language. The original word was “souder” from French. The L was added centuries later, and the American pronunciation basically retained the original pronunciation, rather than the new “spelling pronunciation”.
@@eckypooh50 You are mistaken. It’s _souder._ _Soudre_ is a different, unrelated verb. _Souder_ is, of course, the source word, and it evolved. But the point is that it didn’t have an L.
These torches are dangerous and your not allowed to use them in domestic dwellings unless your liability insurance will cover you burning a house down and if u get a permit, its highly unlikely to both those answers but people still use them
I always have a problem with lead free solder. That goes for electrical soldering as well. I understand if it is on central heating you are still allowed use lead tin solder but not on drinking water pipes.
If you want a compression fitting to never leak (Especially on hot water pipes, that will expand, when hot, and contract as they cool, this eventually causes a leak, as the olive becomes loose on the pipe!!’) solder the olive on the pipe!!’ This turns your joint into a cone joint, assemble with PTFE or jointing compound, and I guarantee, done right, it will never leak, no matter how many Hot/Cold cycles it goes through.!!!’ If working with gas a compression joint is verboten, but by soldering the olive, and making a cone joint, it becomes an approved fitting, and will not leak ever!!!’ Takes a little longer to do but on hot water pipes, and gas fittings, well worth the effort, and extra time!!!’ ຈل͜ຈ .
I remember first day on my plumbing course we all had to solder a 15mm cupler infront of the whole class!! We all over did it. Been working with my brother in law for 2 years before this so done loads but the pressure when everyone was watching!! l😂😂
Wire wool is no longer recommended to clean the pipe prior to soldering use Abrasive strip or a pipe cleaner as wire wool strands can break off and get in the pipe 🤔🤔 that's how i was taught Sir James of Cambridge and i ❤️ the after clean with 0000 ultra fine steel wool as shown by PB
Soldering with bread ,did you know that people who travelled around rural Ireland ,fixing pots and pans use to use wet chewed bread to help solder joints ,that chewed bread became known as A tinkers curse 😂😂😂😂
I couldn't solder a pipe because I neglected to loosen the fitting from the water heater. There was a small water leak at the shut off and air was pushing into the pipe and creating a small channel for the leak.
What are your views on solder ring fittings? I'm a diy'er and been fitting new rads in my house, have used them in all the pipework as I was worried about getting the amount of solder correct if I used normal fittings.
Truthfully as a diyer also I'd say hit and miss, I've had as many fail or require topping up with solder, that on my current renovation project I've just end fed solder for all copper joints. If nothing else a bag of elbows and pipe offcuts give you ample practice to feel confident soldering, and if your using solder rings your 90% there already so the blow torch doesn't feel alien in your hands, and that 5mm rule of thumb tip in the vid will help you master the last 10%...
@@robkiss5272 interestingly same prep and flux yielded perfect end fed joints and variable solder ring joints. Quite likely it's my technique or a rubbish quality fitting
@@nakchAk hmm it would bet on the fittings then. I stopped using those quite early and went to end feed ones. No ring just a few joints, be generous with solder at the beginning…it will be a bit messy but at least no leaks and then less and less solder…you will get the feel then like Jimmy says a bit of Brasso and it will be pretty too. 😀 Never be beaten
I’ve been in the industry for 36 years always used soft solder without any issues I lived in nz for 7 years and they used silver solder due to the earthquake risk on joints don’t need to worry about that in the uk
