Freezing water lines  

wow that's one of the coolest ways I've seen to replace pipe. well done sir

Definitely works sweating but stressful as hell.

If you use the same gas to freeze as the UK then if you solder you want plenty of ventilation as the flame causes the gas to be toxic… I found that out the hard way 😅

Freeze kits have been around decades longer than pro press systems, and I've soldered many frozen lines. There are tricks to it, and it does suck. The best option is a freeze blanket kit, which is much better but much more expensive.

I would imagine from a physics perspective you would either:

I always keep jet swets ready in case the ice plug thaws out. You can solder, you just have to work fast and keep the solder work as far away from the ice plug as possible.

I work at a Nuclear Facility and we use these freezing jackets if we need to fix piping or replace components when the upstream isolator is not accessible, it's called an ice plug.

Also if you freeze upstream of a like a 90, if for some reason that slug breaks off, it will get stuck in the 90 giving a little extra uhoh time

That seems like a nightmare but you guys made it look simple .

How does freezing the pipe work without bursting (or at least swelling) the copper pipe?

I have the kit and have used it atleast a dozen times. A majority of the time I soldered the pipe, that was before pressing got popular,

it works with sweating , just gotta be around 18” downstream from the freezing stoppage ( i also use heat sink gel) trying to mitigate excessive heat from traveling upstream..

Just out of curiosity, what happens if ice plug fails or you don't complete the repair for some reason? How do you recover from the main line spraying all over?

That's....cool

I just did this to replace the pump on an old radiator system in my uncles house so we wouldn't have to drain it. I had to use dry ice because my kit got stolen last year, but it works well.

How long until the ice plug melts?

Beautiful

You could but would probably get more than a drop of water

As long as you are a foot away from the ice plug soldering is not an issue

That's wild. Seems logical though.