Help - Water main leaking!

[Eric Johnson]

GVA is right--you've got water in the piping, making it impossible to get the fitting hot enough to solder correctly. Is there a way to drain the water off above/below the fitting? If you have a leaky valve, then you might have to turn the water off at the main shutoff and wait for it to drain out. A Sharkbite is probably not a bad solution if you can't get it dry. And if it's domestic water, you can always try the old lump of bread trick.

But in any event, you have to take the fitting off and clean/flux everything down again before you try to resolder. If any of your solder stuck, you might need to cut it out. That's usually the easiest approach.

Starting over from scratch--happens to me all the time. Kind of like restacking wood when the pile falls over. That happened to me yesterday.

As to the reason for the failure--who knows? Pipes crack and leak over time. They seem to be making the walls thinner these days, so a little abuse with a pipe wrench is all it takes. I don't know if it's the right way to do it, but I always try to put the wrench on the fittings, not the pipe. And I managed to crack a fitting or two on my last project. Be especially careful with brass valves.

 

[cbrodsky]

Round 2 was a success! Sure enough, apparently a bunch more water had gotten into the bottom of that elbow after I put the coupling on that I was attempting to solder.

I assembled the NPT fitting and elbow to a straight pipe section still short enough to rotate around to thread it in. Then I used a shark-bite slip coupling to close it up - worked great!

A couple things I learned:

1. HD sells copper in short lengths up to 3/4 - ironically, the more expensive 1" copper is only in 10 ft lengths. Lowes now carries copper in 5 foot and 2 foot lengths all the way up through 1". Getting a two foot length saved me $25 over the 10 footer.

2. Shark bite fittings are the way to go whenever there is risk of water in the final connections or you may ever need to disassemble. Second time I've used them. They are pricey - $14 vs. $3 for a solder coupling. But had I done that in the first place yesterday for the final reattachment, I would have saved $10 on a new 1" street elbow & NPT fitting and $10 on a new 2-foot piece of 1" copper, not to mention an extra hour of my time plus a trip to HD and Lowes. Glad Eric made me aware of them on another thread.

3. Holy cow are plumbers expensive around here. I actually considered it yesterday to finish the coupling up - was quoted $75 to show up, and then $162.50/hr on top of that unless I wanted to wait until Monday at which it drops to a mere $90/hour on top of the $75 fee. 1 hour minimum no matter how long it took, which is kind of funny because I thought that's what the $75 covers - getting out to your place. Throw in sales tax and marked up fitting prices and you're looking at $300 for what is likely a 15-30 min job.

-Colin

 

[brownie]

YUP can make ALOT of money in the water business. The pipe wrench did make that crack. A pipe wrench uses pressure to grip the pipe. Use the smallest pipe wrench that will work. OK for Galv. not so good for brass. Brass to copper no problem, do it all the time.

 

[velvetfoot]

So your outage was a day? Not too bad.
As I've said before, I've had the same travails with sweating pipe, even on totally dry stuff.
In the old days, the lead-containing stuff was really easy.
I said to myself that I would practice, but after I hired the plumber to do the job when I was out of town, i haven't, but I should.

 

[cbrodsky]

YUP can make ALOT of money in the water business. The pipe wrench did make that crack. A pipe wrench uses pressure to grip the pipe. Use the smallest pipe wrench that will work. OK for Galv. not so good for brass. Brass to copper no problem, do it all the time.

The worst thing about all of this is that I'm doing all this to clean up the "professional" who installed this in the first place when the house was built - which is exactly why I was reluctant to pay another one $300 to re-do it.

-Coin

 

[Eric Johnson]

Glad it worked out for you, Colin. Nice looking work.

 

[Hogwildz]

Shark Bites are the sheet man. I used em & lovem. Time & aggravation saved is well worthy the extra cost.
Congrats on a repair well done, and money saved.

 

[keyman512us]

Well, round 1 didn't go so well today... got the new 6" brass nipple installed and pressurized it up to the valve to check that it was leak tight before going any further - no problems there. I'll have to post a pic of the old one - it was cracking right down the middle.

The attached picture shows the disaster I had trying to solder the final coupling to reconnect the water supply. Don't laugh - I know it's a mess. I think I'm not getting it hot enough, which is frustrating given that this is the first time I'm using the MAPP gas torch. I never saw the solder flow - on this joint or the existing one right below it where the 1" pipe goes into the elbow. I suspect that water in the brass nipple is just a huge heat sink and preventing me from getting up to temperature. Eric - I had an outside faucet open which is not too far beyond this point to help vent. I also went at the surfaces of the pipe and coupling w/wire wheel on the dremmel tool to get off any corrosion following by a light sanding, and thought I had it all nicely covered w/flux. Any other ideas on what is going wrong here?

To go at this a bit differently, I'm thinking I could cut the pipe above the messy coupling and take out the elbow/NPT transition and assemble a replacement on the floor with the right length of 1" copper pipe. Then thread that assembly in, and do the final coupling with a 1" shark bite slip coupling rather than risking screwing up another solder connection at the very end.

In case it's not obvious, I really don't like soldering...

Nagghh...Not obvious! lol

Soldering??? You aren't or (were not in a former lifetime) a welder by any chance??? lol

Soldering something like that isn't exactly the easiest task...and soldering copper takes a "little practice" to get it just right... Not bad though...

-Colin

 

[keyman512us]

By the way, here are a couple pictures of what started this... the original brass pipe was splitting wide open after just 5 years. The bright teeth marks from a pipe wrench are from me taking it off as it really didn't matter at this point, but there are some from the builder's install. Not clear if they caused it to start splitting or not.

Also got a picture of the inside - there is a lump and some other crud along the crack on the inside of the nipple.

I couldn't help but notice the Made In China stamp on the pipe either

Any ideas on what caused this failure? I have a much easier to access similar brass nipple on the other side that connects up w/the poly line to the well, but I'm not sure I should even bother with it - as I understand, that is not necessarily under the same house water pressure.

-Colin

At risk "of suffering the wrath of 'WEB'..." I'll be somewhat reserved in my response...

Made in China??? Yeah 98% of the problem... Not to say everything from China is "junk" but how much "junk" to you have to deal with before "it's all junk"...

Regardless of where or who made that nipple...it was junk before it left the factory.

I'm sure if you boxed it up and mailed it off to either ASTM, any of the trade organizations, or even a company like WATTS... a little metalurgical testing would reveal the "mix of metals" to make the brass are way off the mark...

Look at the discoloration on the side of that nipple... that brass was junk...was way too brittle....