Jay has a good story about soldering (or resoldering) a pipe on his boiler. It seems that there was one little elbow, on the water return side of the boiler, which was leaking. Jay, always the conscientious homeowner, decided to resolder the leaking joint. So far, so good. He drained all the water out of his hydronic heating system. Mind you, the temperatures around here have been running between 5-10 degrees F outside at night around here, so this needed to be a fast job. Then he broke out his small propane torch and spend the next hour or so trying to heat the joint to get it apart, then solder it back together. When he told me the story yesterday, I said “Propane, oh no, no, no. My friend, what you need is MAPP gas and a turbo torch.”
What you need when you are soldering is heat, lots of heat, fast. The only way to get a good solder joint is to heat it up and apply most of the solder after you remove the torch. It should flow through the joint and stay melted for several seconds. I did a good post about soldering pipes, and as an added bonus, here is a youtube video:
And, here is a link to a pipe soldering video from ask the builder.com.Back to Jay, over lunch time, we went the very convenient Home Depot and picked up a Bernzomatic
TS4000T trigger start touch and a cylinder of MAPP gas.Results: Jay came into my office this morning and said, “It was unbelievable, I held the (new TS4000T) torch on there for like, 10 seconds, and (sucking noise) the solder just went right in!”It is all about having the right tool for the job.
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