How To Solder Copper Pipes Like A Pro

[Music] hello i'm roger bisbee from the skill builder channel and in this video i want to show you how to solder like a professional with so many different ways of joining pipes you've got crimping you've got compression fittings you've got push fit so why would you choose soldering over those other methods well one thing is that soldering is quite neat it's tried and tested it can be if it's done properly very reliable it's also cheaper if you're buying fittings such as this is a bit cheaper than the equivalent compression or push fit or even a crimp fitting i also like it because when you're burying pipes behind box work if you're putting behind tiling and things like that there's always that little bit of uncertainty with a push fit is the o-ring gonna fail at some time if you make a good solder joint it should be there for the next 30 40 even 50 years but of course let's be fair there are disadvantages to soldering one thing is it requires a degree of skill and of course you're working with a naked flame and in some buildings that we work in they specify no naked flames the other great disadvantage which has happened to me on many occasions is if you do get a leak you've got to drain down the whole system to fix the leak you cannot solder on a wet pipe you have to have the pipe absolutely dry even a little bit of residual water will turn to steam and blow through the solder of the fitting and cause a leak so make sure all the water's out of the system if you have to use a vacuum cleaner or something like that wet and dry vacuum cleaner the other golden rule is apart from keeping the pipes dry is keep them clean you cannot solder with dirty pipes so the good news is that these days we've got self-cleaning fluxes but there's a limit to what a self-cleaning flux will do i deliberately chose this pipe because it's dirty and you can see it's got a bit of vertigreen dirt on it so if we use a self-cleaning flux on that and we tried to put some solder on it we would be struggling so you can see that the self-cleaning flux has already started to do its work a little bit of heat and then you can see the solder the solders run just where the self cleaner is quite nicely there if we tried up here where there isn't any flaps and we haven't cleaned the pipe you'll see exactly what flux does [Applause] you can see that it's taken a little bit to there but it wouldn't be enough to make a leak-free joint it's essential that we flux out also clean any dirty pipe now there's lots of different ways of cleaning pipe this little gizmo is supposed to clean it it's got kind of memory inside it but actually after a while they don't work that well what i do is just get myself a little bit of light abrasive just give it a shine round like that and you can see that it's made a nice job i'm not really interested in cleaning this down there because if any solder was to run down there that would actually help stop it there are people that say oh you've got to deburr that pipe you've got to get rid of any lip on the inside because it causes the turbulence there's truth in that but i don't know many plumbers who deburr all their pipes just give the inside of the fitting a shine up now this is a soldering fitting a soldering fitting has the solder inside the fitting itself in that ring there and that gives you a clue to how much solder you need to make a decent joint they reckon there's about five times more solder than you actually need inside a soldering fitting so when we pop that on there we don't need to feed it with any solder although a lot of plumbers do they give it a little dab just to make sure that there's really no need at all on the other side i'm going to use what we call an end feed fitting now these are a lot cheaper it means you have to feed the solder in to the fitting as you heat it up and that's what most professionals will use we're basically about saving a bit of money so why do some people call it soldering americans call it soldering they've dropped the l out of it for some reason and um yeah it's just like tomato tomato you know there's a lot of other things aluminum aluminium the reason i want to show you this rather than some other configuration is because the bit a lot of people struggle with is doing that bottom joint it's easy enough to do one going into the top but when it comes to doing the bottom joint they do struggle sometimes so we're going to show you that now the inside of that fitting is clean so i'm not even going to bother cleaning that out anymore i'm just going to wipe a little bit of flux around there you can put the flux on the pipe or you can put it on the fitting or you can put it on both but what you don't want to do is apply too much flux because if you apply too much flux it's going to run down that pipe this is a little thing that you can buy use a little device for flux it's called a fluctuator screw it on there you've got a tube full of flaps we just wind a bit of flux up into the device there you can see it coming up put the end of the pipe there give it a little going over and that should give us the correct amount of flats put that into there same goes for the other end give it a little spin so some people find that a useful device i think i'll stick to my flux brush but it does save you that risk of over fluxing so we'll give it a go on this one as well now this isn't essential but i like to do it and that's to wipe off the residue of flux before you start if you're trying to get a good looking joint then you don't want the solder running all the way down the pipe on the outside of the pipe creating what we call christmas trees which were lots of little balls of solder everywhere just the word about the heat you don't want to catch anything on fire so use a heat mat you can put that between the pipe and the wall if you like you can use a heat shield you can use anything basically that won't catch fire you can even get a spray which you spray on flammable surfaces just to keep it cool and it's also a good idea to keep a little spray bottle of water around in case anything does it like a small wood shaving or something catches fire have a wet rag as well i've got a fire extinguisher we're supposed to bring that onto every job there's a condition of the insurance and the other thing is after we've soldered a joint you're supposed to hang around for about half an hour just to make sure that nothing has caught fire so strictly speaking if i work in the customer's house and i'll do a 10 minute job i've still got to hang around for another half hour just to make sure that nothing is smoldering before i leave so the other very important thing is i like to clip all the pipe work first you know put the clips in then you're sure where all the pipes are going and then you can make sure that the pipe is steady and it's not moving around because when you're soldering you don't want the pipe work moving around now these if you put them too close to the fittings will melt so putting them slightly down is a good idea and if you're worried you can put a wet rag around anything that you don't want to heat up and that could be anything like valves it could be anything that contains an o-ring if there's a plastic fitting nearby wrap it up in a wet cloth like that let's leave that in there by the way just to see exactly what happens with the heat when we start putting on now it doesn't really matter what you use in the way of a blow lamp some kind of gas fire torch you can pick them up for as little as 15 pounds and butane is fine you don't need to have this what they call map gas which is basically now just propane you can use a cooler gas because we don't need a huge amount of heat for this soldering so the question people ask is how much solder to use because if you start feeding it in you don't know how much you've used so what i do is i bend it over if i'm working on a 22 mil pipe i give it about that much 22 mil you just zigzag the bit of solder down like that at least you know that if you get that much solder in there it must have gone somewhere if you're putting more than that in chances are it's coming down the outside of the pipe or it may be coming down the inside of the pipe which is worse because you get little solder balls and you get clogged up pipes so let's get going and it's going to be a bit noisy so i'll try and talk over it but you'll see what i'm doing here nice gentle bit of heat [Applause] now it's very very important that you don't touch these joints obviously because they're hot but also we don't want to disturb the pipe work while it's cooling down sometimes it takes 20-30 seconds for it to cool down enough to you can start to move the pipework around so leave it don't rush it people use a wet rag sometimes i've been told that can crack the solder i don't know whether that's true or not but if you're going to use it just use it nice and gently like that so some plumbers notably james from plumber's parts like to do a nice shine up job on their pipework and i fully approve of that i think it's good especially if you're charging the customer money there you are that's done the bottom one i'll be quick the bottom one will be quick because it was already heated by the top one because as i said it's a good conductor the solder has run perfectly round the whole fitting and on the bottom there it's run nicely around the fitting if it's your first time soldering and you want a bit of belt and braces the yorkshire fitting with the solder already in is a good bet for you the most important thing about cleaning up is that we need to get rid of any residue of flux because flux is a corrosive it's acidic so it will continue to sit on the pipe and corrode the pipe i have seen examples where people have left a lot of flux on there and it's eaten through the pipe after sort of 15 years or whatever and caused the leak so get rid of it make sure everything's nice and clean even if you don't go to james's dura glitch shop i think he's got it in his amazon shop the other thing flush the pipe work through because it's got to be clean on the inside flux is corrosive so if you've done some central heating if you've added a couple of radiators to your house you need to make sure you flush the system through clean water and do it thanks for watching come back and see us soon i'm going to show you how to test this pipe work with air in another video so keep watching because you don't need to fill it up with water in order to find out whether you've got any leaks and that way you don't have to drain it all down if you have got a leak i use air testing and i tend to pump it up three or four bar and leave it there overnight just to make sure the whole thing is perfectly sound

Channel: Skill Builder

Views: 536,299

Keywords: how to solder copper pipe, how to solder, plumbing repair, soldering copper pipe, plumbing hacks, plumbing tools, plumbing trick, plumbing how to, plumbing video, do it yourself, plumbing basics, plumbing diy, plumbing videos, how to solder copper, how to do plumbing, how to solder copper pipe like a pro, how to solder copper pipe the correct way, soldering tutorial, solder copper pipe, soldering tips, soldering copper pipes

Id: pl_Q2_hcs-8

Length: 11min 55sec (715 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 27 2022