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Hello everyone,
I'll give a bit of background to my question which is, I suppose, the latest installment of our DIY quest to refurbish our entire house.
A few days ago our friendly plumber came over to do a bit of work to our mains pipe and some additional pipework under the kitchen sink, all in preparation for us to fit our new kitchen. I wanted a pro in as it involved some alterations to the mains supply and I recognise my limits, well, hopefully. It was mostly copper aside from the runs in the walls which are speedfit although we changed the elbows and inserts.
All was well until the next morning when we found a considerable escape of water. It appeared, even under close examination, that the leak was from the JG elbow, which has happened to me before when using copper into JG, even with careful prep of the copper.
Anyway, after ripping the then finished wall out again to gain access and changing the elbow, the leak continued. Turns out it was a tiny gap in the solder on the under side of a 22mm copper run, right at the back and out of sight, oops. Plumber was mortified when we told him.
We got the leak under control with buckets. Our plumber offered to come back but even if he had set off immediately, it would have been a few hours. As we had kids to get to sports and so on, we thought, unwisely perhaps, that we might as well have a crack at repairing it. Some years back I'd bought all the kit to learn to solder but never got around to it. Bit of a baptism of fire this was.
Fast forward a bit and we managed to desolder the leaking section and rather than attempt to reuse it, decided to cut and fit a new section. It all seemed to go OK despite my blow torch maybe being a bit hot, something to look into later.
Being as clumsy as I am, during soldering of the new section, I dropped a little spot of solder on the end which was to go into the JG elbow...! I called our plumber and he said to heat up the pipe and use a wet rag to remove the solder. We tried this several times and it did remove much of it, but there was a very stubborn tiny blob left of 1mm or so. I sanded it as much as I dare, but it just wouldn't come off. In the end we decided it was so smooth that whilst it would distort the JG o ring on the way in, it would only be by a tiny tiny amount and we also measured and determined it wouldn't sit on the o ring itself.
Fortunately, all has gone well and 24 hours later, no leaks. I'm just glad the leak happened when it did, rather than when we had started to fit the kitchen units!
TLDR: How do you remove very stubborn little drops of solder from copper pipe without ruining it, or is it better just to recut and refit?
Thanks
I'll give a bit of background to my question which is, I suppose, the latest installment of our DIY quest to refurbish our entire house.
A few days ago our friendly plumber came over to do a bit of work to our mains pipe and some additional pipework under the kitchen sink, all in preparation for us to fit our new kitchen. I wanted a pro in as it involved some alterations to the mains supply and I recognise my limits, well, hopefully. It was mostly copper aside from the runs in the walls which are speedfit although we changed the elbows and inserts.
All was well until the next morning when we found a considerable escape of water. It appeared, even under close examination, that the leak was from the JG elbow, which has happened to me before when using copper into JG, even with careful prep of the copper.
Anyway, after ripping the then finished wall out again to gain access and changing the elbow, the leak continued. Turns out it was a tiny gap in the solder on the under side of a 22mm copper run, right at the back and out of sight, oops. Plumber was mortified when we told him.
We got the leak under control with buckets. Our plumber offered to come back but even if he had set off immediately, it would have been a few hours. As we had kids to get to sports and so on, we thought, unwisely perhaps, that we might as well have a crack at repairing it. Some years back I'd bought all the kit to learn to solder but never got around to it. Bit of a baptism of fire this was.
Fast forward a bit and we managed to desolder the leaking section and rather than attempt to reuse it, decided to cut and fit a new section. It all seemed to go OK despite my blow torch maybe being a bit hot, something to look into later.
Being as clumsy as I am, during soldering of the new section, I dropped a little spot of solder on the end which was to go into the JG elbow...! I called our plumber and he said to heat up the pipe and use a wet rag to remove the solder. We tried this several times and it did remove much of it, but there was a very stubborn tiny blob left of 1mm or so. I sanded it as much as I dare, but it just wouldn't come off. In the end we decided it was so smooth that whilst it would distort the JG o ring on the way in, it would only be by a tiny tiny amount and we also measured and determined it wouldn't sit on the o ring itself.
Fortunately, all has gone well and 24 hours later, no leaks. I'm just glad the leak happened when it did, rather than when we had started to fit the kitchen units!
TLDR: How do you remove very stubborn little drops of solder from copper pipe without ruining it, or is it better just to recut and refit?
Thanks
