6 SOLDERING MISTAKES ON COPPER PIPE

so you bought yourself a blowtorch because you want to do a little bit of soldering in your copper pipe in the world of Plumbing so you can impress the misses well there's six mistakes that everyone makes when they're doing this don't make them yourself let's find out what they are and how we can get around them oh Jack so we've got a piece of pipe here does it really look clean to you does it if it does then you've already about made your first mistake just like I can't speak English anymore but is not clean that is the first mistake that loads of people make they try to solder onto a piece of pipe that isn't clean sometimes it works sometimes I can get this on here like now grab yourself a fit in look nothing's clean like I straight away I just hate that I could put some heat on there it might run it might not if it doesn't work properly water damages houses and properties quite a bit it's a bit like fire in it the only thing that stops fire is water I don't know what that's got to do with this video but it's still something you should think about so look make sure you clean the pipe there's a couple of ways that we can do that usually you use a thing called Emery cloth that you can buy in our Amazon store or you can use wire wall you get on the end of the pipe like so and you can give that a little bit of a clean up oh look look how clean that is the reason we need to clean that is because solder needs perfectly clean contacted copper to go on to so I can get into that copper and get into the fitting as well to make a watertight seal we could just start soldering now couldn't we we could get that on then start soldering it couldn't we no we can't can we because there's problem number two that people like you make all the time well not people like you because you're actually figuring out how to not make these mistakes the next one is people do not flux the fitting mental we need this to be even cleaner and the way we do that we use acid flux believe me don't get flux in your eye I've got it in my eye once my Apprentice laughed because I jumped up so quick I was like like that and he started going like laughing honestly I was not happy with him I was like I'm in pain you know I thought we were friends just get some flux on there like so do not get flux on the inside of the pipe because flux is an acid and it can stay in the pipe and over years can burn through it and cause a pinhole but when we do our flaming on here we heat it up so much it burns off and it isn't there after we've done the soldering the other thing as well don't I mean some people would say put flux on the inside of the fitting don't really think that's a great idea what you want to do is just pop it on like so and twist it around a bit and then you know that the flux is all over another little sort of mini mistake some people make is they'll put the flux on and they'll go away for like a day and then come back and expect to solder it by which time the flux has kind of gone crusty and it just doesn't work as well all right so that's number two I'll be ready to do any soldering now no we're not so keep shouting I do get a bit shouty when I'm talking about soldering it's the thing that's close to me are the other thing that people don't do is they might pick up a fitting that's been in their box for a while this is actually a very nice brand new kind of fitting but they don't clean the inside of the fitting that's the one thing I would say you should do if you're using old stuff get inside that fit in and give it a bit of a clean okay try and do the same to the inside of the fitting as we did on the outside here but don't put flux in it now are we finally ready to do a little bit of soldering I think you find that we are I'm sure you're all happy I'm not gonna have a go at you anymore imagine that you sat there watching YouTube being made to feel small and insignificant but my wife does to me anyway let's get soldering oh by the way I've got a small tip on here now the good thing about this tip it doesn't get hot so when you when you pop your blow torch down and it falls over it doesn't burn a hole through someone's carpet which has never happened to me ever but one thing you can do with it is you can turn it up too high so you can put it on here and we get that fitting going look at it it's just all insane like everything's too much we're heating the fitting up nicely at the moment but now I would say that's getting to a point where it's too hot the fitting is getting too warm and we're putting too much heat on it and you can see the fitting is actually going blue when it's gone like a kind of Bluey color like that what you've done is you've fatally weakened the metal of the fitting and the pipe you've structurally changed it it's got too hot and over time it could leak you don't want to go into doing a solder with this flat out it's just going to go completely crazy and I think you can see like the way that we were there like that it's all a bit mad we're too close but I sold it like that when I was started out as an apprentice and I as much as I try to make this video amusing we do all start out not knowing what we're doing we're not born with the knowledge of everything are we and the only way to learn is to see other people do it and also to make your own mistakes and not say the word playful properly so I'm going to take this off I mean that is roasting art look at it in there I mean that would probably solder but that's far too much heat on that okay this is mistake number five it's too little heat obviously now I'll show you what that looks like so we've got that on and you're scared your blowtorch because you've never used it before still running now and you're like that hopefully you're not on a price because you're going to be here for days especially if this is a bigger size pipe if it's like 22 mil or 28 mil if you're using this at this kind of speed or heat output yeah it's not going to do anything you're going to be here for donkeys nice and quiet though let's get this one done so it's actually ready for us to use so you can see this from the top okay give that a good old cleanup we're going to get our fitting oh look we're going to run around and I'll fit in a bit and get that nice and clean as well a bit of flux on air and then do what we did a minute ago run that around if you want a really clean joint little nice little tip wipe off any of the excess flux around the fitting before you do any soldering there are kind of like two issues two mistakes that you can make in one here and it's how much solder you put into the fitting when you're doing your job so we've got this fitting here let's light this Beast up and we're going to get this to the actual temperature that I normally do a 15 mil thing at so we're going to get that down that there oh probably a little bit too heavy that's probably about right for 15 mil like that sort of noise hear that down to burn my nose hairs and we're gonna heat it up usually I start on the underside because I like my solder to run to the underside we're going to whip round and then we come around here give that a little bit yeah and then we get our solder and we just go oh that oh lovely done I ain't done that's not enough solder I would say if you're going to do a 15 mil fitting and you're just starting out to do this it might be a good idea that you run your solder out and if you want get yourself a pen and every five mil just mark on your solder every five mil and that for now would be roughly what I'd put in to a 15 mil fitting okay as a newbie when you get more experienced at this you will actually probably use a little bit less because you don't have loads coming out the other mistake people make is they whack loads of solder in and you end up with what we call pigeon poo on the bottom of the thing and it just looks horrible really it's not very nice however if it's in a floorboard put as much solder in as you are happy to do just have a look around the back of this fit in here you'll now know what I mean so for me it looks kind of like a nice little fit internet if we go around here there's no solder around this side of the fitting that would definitely leak okay so if we just reheat this again sometimes what I like about these little tools here you can just pop a little bit of sold around a little bit of flux light this up so why I like to heat from the bottom as well is that I can then put my soldering at the top it will run to the bottom and I know it's got around the whole fitting so that's run at the top there and then [Music] but we're not at home to Mr up all right and also you've just started out you can't expect Instagram soldering and let's face it all the guys that show their soldering on Instagram whilst their work looks absolutely beautiful and I applaud you of how good it is that's not the reality believe me especially under the floorboards this is just for like an extra tip give you a pipe a Brasso look at this so so hot still it's burning the Brasso off and then polish it this is what I do if I'm bringing my pipe work up to radiators and stuff and that'll stay nice and bright forever old school plumber fat plumber Parts fans will know that I have Brasso in my soldering bag at all times get this on the Amazon store also I found out maxo I believe is to hug in Spanish my Spanish teacher said that to me he keeps saying what's that mean mate right so the last one okay and this one yeah there's a mistake that we all kind of make I'm gonna use this piece over here for this mistake because we need to get some water in it this is when people try to solder a pipe with water in it and it doesn't work I'm afraid all right so there we go put a bit of water in there firstly let's just see what happens to the pipe so we've got a fitting in this and we want to heat that up and solder it side and say there's a drip every so often as well so you're gonna get in here like this oh that's coming out and what effectively is happening there is the heat the water is taking the heat away from the fitting and we need a proper amount of heat the right amount of heat to make sure that we get a lovely solder on there don't we if we don't have the right amount of heat we ain't gonna get our soluble boy a few things that you can do right if you've got two blow torches this is an old school trick so the pipes coming down here just imagine now use your brains and imagine this you've got the pipe coming down here with water running down it and you basically you heat this piece up here to flash it into steam so then you get yourself a nice little chance to get the cell drawn in there get that heated up and get it done properly the other little trick we use it's an old school one I've seen loads of other YouTubers have said about this but none of them are anywhere near as attractive as I am you get a little piece of bread and you chew the bread a little bit have a bit of yourself if you like make sure you put that down in my fitness pal Fred's got calories bloats me Max and then you pop the bread in the fitting like that and then you've got a few minutes once you've got the bread in there you just sort of get it in push it down with a pencil and that acts as like a nice little water type bun but the reason we use bread is because over time it degrades falls apart and then flows off away from the system so that is one thing I mean we could I could try to demonstrate doing this but I mean all that water in there I've just pulled all over my tools lovely that would stop definitely a solder so if you cut a pipe and there's a drip coming out of it either find out how to turn the water off to stop that happening you could try and freeze it if you're an absolute Legend and you know how to freeze pie if you do you're probably not here to watch this video anyway or you could use the remedial little tricks that I've got there as well to sort that out or you could not solder and use a compression fitting instead in which case don't make any mistakes on compression fittings because there's quite a few mistakes that people make and that's this video here watch that now it's going to teach you how to not make mistakes on compression fittings having she said subscribe goodbye [Music]

Channel: plumberparts

Views: 152,115

Keywords: how to solder copper pipe, mistakes on copper pipe, how to solder, plumbing trick, do it yourself, plumbing hacks, plumbing repair, plumbing how to, how to repair plumbing, how to fix plumbing, soldering copper pipe, how to do plumbing, plumbing diy, solder with mini torch, how to solder copper, how to solder with a blow torch, plumbing videos, plumbing video

Id: raEldIPChdA

Length: 11min 48sec (708 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 06 2023