If you’re doing plumbing home repair and you’re wanting to know how to plumb, read this for starters.
Propane soldering kit with igniter
After you cut your pipe to the right length it’s time to join them. One typical joint connection would be a 90° bend in other words a copper elbow. Another joints would be a “T” joint where you splice into a water line tapping off from it. The there are the two most common joints.
When you are inserting one of these joints on to the end of the pipe or pipes there are some very simple basic steps you have to do before you join the pipes and the joints by soldering. You need a very few simple tools and a couple of practice runs to be able to perform good solid solder joints.
In the plumbing section of the store asked the clerk for some sandpaper (This stuff is called plumbers Emery cloth) use for scoring the pipe and removing any surface dirt or oxidization. after you have sanded the pipe on the outside and the joint on the inside wipe clean the sanded surfaces with a clean rag and apply some soldering flux. This stuff is almost something like grease but it’s not it helps the soldering to work. It helps to solder flow evenly over everything and helps the bond between solder and the pipe. Sometimes if you can’t get your finger and sandpaper inside the pipe try using it a round wire brush to agitate the surface. Now that you have all your pipes and fittings prepared and fluxed. Put all your bits and pieces together the way you want to be and get ready for soldering.
The copper pipe is heated with a torch, this is when you sweat copper to melt the solder. I use a propane torch with a igniting trigger on it. This saves you lots of gas when you are not using the torch because if you’re doing something as torches burning your wasting gas. Furthermore it might be even unsafe having the torch flame open wiki for an accident. A normal propane torch kits set up consists of, at torch, a propane cylinder, and an igniter to make a spark. Something the same as you use on your barbecue. Now that you have lit your torch look at your flame and adjusted to a sharp blue flame, there should be a positively identifiable inner blue cone in your flame indicating you have a proper flame set up.
Heating up copper pipe called "sweating"
Now you pass this flame over top and around the joint anywhere from 10 to 20 seconds on the average. Now heat both the fitting and the pipe to the correct temperature when you place the tip of your solder on the joint it should start melting the solder immediately and since you cleaned the joints properly with the sandpaper and put the flux on, the solder should run around the entire joint almost like magic. Though sometimes you have to play with it and feed more solder it to the joint applying a little more heat but not directly onto the solder, don’t try melting the solder onto a cold pipe. It’s the pipe that has to melt the solder. It doesn’t take a whole role of solder to join the pipe it takes a very small amount if done properly.
When you learned this very well along with a few other plumbing know-how’s you can say to yourself you have greatly reduce the cost plumbing down to the cost of materials and your time.
