Plumbing
Last night, late last night, I was able to finish the replumbing of the soaker tub to using 1/2" O.D. (outside diameter) lines. Turns out it was using 3/8" lines and not the 1/4" I had speculated about, only because soft copper is measured by outside diameter, not inside diameter. Whatever, they were too damn small and the plumber should have known that.
The day before I had turned off the water to the house and soldered 1/2" threaded nipples onto both the hot and cold lines. And I did a damn fine job for my first pipe soldering, if I do say so myself. I put the new 1/2" valves on and turned the water supply back on. That was all I could do that night until I could get the forgotten parts from Home Depot.
After making the requisite second trip to Home Depot to get the parts I had forgotten the day before, I was ready to go. I soldered the (forgotten) unions onto the new flexible copper pipe and everything looked good. I was getting excited that this whole thing might be done in just a few minutes.
Boy was I wrong. After three hours of struggling to get the two unions soldered onto the faucet inlets, and one more trip to Home Depot to get more solder though, I was rewarded with a rushing faucet.
The faucet can now fill the tub faster than the drain can drain it, so it's definitely worth it. I'll have to time how long it takes to fill the tub now, but I suspect it's in the sub-ten minute range now, which makes sense since I basically doubled the pipe size.
I don't know what I did wrong in the soldering of the unions to the valves, though I suspect that it's because I didn't get enough heat evenly around the copper valve stems. Since I was on my back, trying not to burn myself on hot lines, or melt the fiberglass tub's resin, or set the surrounding wood frame on fire, my angles of attach with the blowtorch were severely limited. This meant that I kept getting pinhole leaks in certain spots, and the more I tried to get solder there, the worse things got. Eventually I took everything apart, cleaned everything again, applied lots more flux, bent the valve stems to a more vertical orientation, and was able to get stuff air tight.
I'm still a bit worried about the joins blowing out though, so I've left a bucket under them. :-)
The day before I had turned off the water to the house and soldered 1/2" threaded nipples onto both the hot and cold lines. And I did a damn fine job for my first pipe soldering, if I do say so myself. I put the new 1/2" valves on and turned the water supply back on. That was all I could do that night until I could get the forgotten parts from Home Depot.
After making the requisite second trip to Home Depot to get the parts I had forgotten the day before, I was ready to go. I soldered the (forgotten) unions onto the new flexible copper pipe and everything looked good. I was getting excited that this whole thing might be done in just a few minutes.
Boy was I wrong. After three hours of struggling to get the two unions soldered onto the faucet inlets, and one more trip to Home Depot to get more solder though, I was rewarded with a rushing faucet.
The faucet can now fill the tub faster than the drain can drain it, so it's definitely worth it. I'll have to time how long it takes to fill the tub now, but I suspect it's in the sub-ten minute range now, which makes sense since I basically doubled the pipe size.
I don't know what I did wrong in the soldering of the unions to the valves, though I suspect that it's because I didn't get enough heat evenly around the copper valve stems. Since I was on my back, trying not to burn myself on hot lines, or melt the fiberglass tub's resin, or set the surrounding wood frame on fire, my angles of attach with the blowtorch were severely limited. This meant that I kept getting pinhole leaks in certain spots, and the more I tried to get solder there, the worse things got. Eventually I took everything apart, cleaned everything again, applied lots more flux, bent the valve stems to a more vertical orientation, and was able to get stuff air tight.
I'm still a bit worried about the joins blowing out though, so I've left a bucket under them. :-)
posted by Mark at 9:27 AM
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