How Professional Plumbers BRAZE COPPER LINES

in this video I'm gonna show you the best way to braise copper lines and I'm gonna show you right now so as you can see we started out with safety in line I've got all my safety glasses and I've got on gloves different people wear different things for safety but remember always think safety before you start any job now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna cut this right in the middle then I'm gonna clean it and yes I'm gonna ream it on camera this time that way y'all get to see me but what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take the cutters and I don't have this locked down I've got a nice little jig built here but what I'm going to do is I'm gonna cut this and if y'all can't tell I built a little stand here because when you sill floss or silver solder or braised or whatever you want to call it it gets a lot hotter than normal so what I like to do is have some way to support it I'm going to take this out and as you know when you cut copper you get a bend on the inside so what I'm going to do is I'm gonna take my reamer and make sure that I get a good bubble there now there's different ways to clean your copper you can use sand cloth or you can actually use a scotch brite pad it depends on what you're working on maybe or what condition you're in a lot of times if I'm under a house I will probably go for the abrasive cloth first but I also come back in with my pad just to make sure that I've got it good and clean I'm bad about over cleaning stuff because I want to make sure that the solder has nothing but good pure clean copper to grab a hold of so I'm really big about making sure everything is clean now if you're working on a medical gas system scotch brite pads may be the only thing that you can use so you want to make sure that you get it good and clean both these ends look really good they've been reamed on the inside and cleaned on the outside and as you see we've got good clean surfaces there to work with so now what I'm gonna do I'm gonna do the same thing with my fitting now if this was mad gas your fitting you should already be cleaning them back you probably don't have to do this only on copper that may have got left out oxidized on the outside or something like that once you get it all cleaned up you want to make sure that you get your fitting to go all the way full depth the pipe goes all the way in to the stop that way you know everything is going to trade it in as far as it needs to go I'm gonna smoke this up just a little bit to keep it from moving around I built this little stand here because when this gets hot I don't want it to lose shape I don't want it to start to drop just a little bit so I've got this built just to support it right where I want it in the other video y'all saw we used the pressed a lot we use the small feather flame tip to heat up the copper in order to solder it we also flexed it before we put it together now you don't do that on sill floss the only thing that you might need a flex part is if you're going to brass if you're going to a dis somewhere metal what we've looking at here is copper to copper so we're gonna go to a turbo tip this is a one-inch line so this is probably too small of a tip for it there is a chart no no that we showed it to you in another video so we'll show it to you again but the chart will show you what size tip to use for what size lines the other thing that I want to show you here before we get started make sure you look at your silver solder before you really get going I've had this happen to me before but this is some older silver solder and it started to oxidize if you use this while you are soldering what happens is this oxidation will stay in the solder and it will actually cause it to leak because that's impurities that are in there they're actually gonna allow the water to leak through it so it's not a good thing to have if you look at new SIL floss it's actually bright and shiny looks nice and clean I mean this thing looks like a brand new piece of silver that's what you want it to look like before you get started if you end up with any impurities in your solder joint it can actually cause it to leak and that's gonna make you have to start over and do everything again there's a couple of different rules that always go by I used to do a lot of silver soldering because I worked for a fire protection company and we were running copper mains not just mains but the branch choose the drops almost everything and there was very little penetration what we would do is we would use a tea drill to drill a hole into the pipe and it would actually pull out a fitting that you could stick the pop into so literally your metal to metal surface was only about an eighth of an inch so what we did when we soldered there was literally you put a cap on it and you built a really good cap that's how I started out learning to solder well then when I got into met gas they want full penetration they want that solder to pull all the way down into the center of your fitting now the funny thing about it is a fire protection system goes at about 300 psi these for a waterline not anywhere near that much I'm gonna go ahead and show you full penetration I'm also gonna show you how I put a cap on it because I still believe in that when I start a silver solder to join our sill floss joint I like to heat my pot because I want my pipe to expand to fill up the fitting then I move my flame over to my fitting to make sure that I have good heat in there solder goes to where the fire is solder goes to where the heat is so I like to move my torch around and when I'm putting solder in I like to make sure it gets pushed in really good especially if I'm going for full penetration and when I'm doing that I want to make sure too that I keep my heat right in the middle of the fitting all right here we go one thing here stay around to the end I've got a trick that I do that my guys think is fantastic and really what it is it's how not to waste any silver solder at all because this stuff is expensive [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] now one thing that I do I want to make sure that I keep this hot enough that I can see this silver solder melting on both sides it's blending into the copper as you can see I built a cap on both sides and the reason that I do that is like I said that's the way that I learned whenever I was doing fire protection systems so this cap is nice and big I cannot see the edge of the fitting at all and I like that because I know that not only have I filled it but I've also come back and capped it too one thing that I don't do is I don't use water to cool down these joints I will actually wait and let this joint cool down by itself the reason being I really think that when the joint is this high and you wet it down with a rag or even just water a spray bottle or anything you can cause it to crack and I don't want to do anything to mess up this joint where would you use silver solder like I said on med gas systems yes where we use them more than anything at all is if we tunnel up under a house to fix the slab leak the reason being they don't want you soldering under the slab so what we do if we have to make a copper repair because you know you normally don't put fittings under a slab but if we have to make a copper repair under a slab or maybe even if we're making a repair we'll retain a PEX or an open or line to it we will actually braze an adapter on there that way we can hook that pop-up to it this is one of the neatest things to learn because this is where you can really get in and make some good repairs so I'm gonna let this joint cool down for just a second and then we'll come back and show you what it looks like so we've made a good silver solder joint here and we didn't even burn down the house and that kind of neat now what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna clean it up a little bit because I want you to really be able to see it now I'm gonna tell you this is not a battle of conjoint I've got a couple of titties on it but if you look it actually laid down in there real smooth it looks like it melted in and blended good like I said I got one right there that's a little big I got one right there that's a little big but other than that I'm telling you I like this I think this joint would be good I don't think it ever leaked and that's how you do it guys remember the things that I talked about make sure that your silver solder is good and clean there's no oxidation or if there's anything like that make sure you clean your joint I can't tell you how big that is and I have I've seen some people that just really don't and I don't know if this they don't worry about it I don't know what it is but I like to clean my joints before and after after lets me get a good look at them to see are there any holes anything like that and like the dimple right there in the coupling you know every noun in whenever I used bad solder before you know you could see a hole there and you don't always realize that the solder has oxidation on it so take them in it and look at it because what you don't want to have you don't want to have a lake after you've gone through and fixed everything and I'm telling you if your solder is not good if it's not clean if your coupling getting getting hot enough there's a lot of different reasons that can make you have problems if you sill floss or your brazier or you so much butter or whatever it is you call it let me know is there anything that you do different because look we're all taught different ways and I completely get that I'm not the only way to do it I just do it the way that I was taught and if you liked this video leave me a comment down below let me know what you think or what you do do anyway this is how I do it I'm Roger Wakefield LEED AP the expert plumber I'll see you in the next video

Channel: Roger Wakefield

Views: 599,228

Keywords: how to braze copper, how to braze copper pipe like a pro, how to braze copper pipe, how to braze copper lines, how to braze, braze copper pipe, braze copper lines, brazing, copper, brazing copper, how to braze copper pipe with silver solder, how to braze copper to copper, how to braze copper water pipe, how to silver braze copper pipe, braze copper pipe repair, how to braze copper pipe plumbing

Id: xn04V9yTvN4

Length: 14min 37sec (877 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 08 2020