A friend soldered up my garage's plumbing over the Christmas holiday, so
I have some over the shoulder knowledge to share.
You didn't mention the drain for the sink. Since that has to work by
gravity, its routing is more critical and must be solved first, though
not necessarily installed first.
You won't be able to bend the cut ends of the pipe to slip on a tee. Can
one end or the other be slid sideways to get the tee on? Once you solve
that mechanical puzzle, the strategy of soldering the plumbing is to get
both ends of a pipe run fitted before soldering. The tee will only go
one place. Do you want the garage sink's valve to be just straight out
of the wall from there, or routed over a bit? My friend set up quite a
bit of copper and fittings before going through them all in sequence.
Use wet or dry sandpaper and get those surfaces very clean, especially
any seams in the fittings. I have one elbow that is leaking just the
smallest weep. I'll have to remove the corner and redo it. The flux only
has to go on the pipe. It will flux the inside of the fitting.
Then you heat one side of the fitting and when it is hot enough, apply
solder to the other side of the pipe, the place furthest from the heat.
If you get it all just right, you should use one pipe diameter's worth
of solder.
Good luck!
Ken Landaiche
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Lee - Team Banana Racing [mailto:mikel@ichips.intel.com]
I want to add a utility sink to my garage; the wife gets cranky when I
get
greasy stains on the doors as I try to make my way to the bathroom sink.
I've located the water lines to the bathroom sink, and conveniently
enough,
can pop through the wall on the other side to hook up the utility sink.
The problem is that the only soldering I've ever done is electrical....
If I understand the procedure right, I need to take some fine sandpaper
or
steel wool to clean up both the copper fitting and pipe first. Then
brush
a light coat of flux onto both. Fit the pipe and fitting together.
Heat
with a propane torch until I can get the solder to wick into the joint.
Let
cool and then clean with a wet rag. Does this sound correct? Is there
a way
for me to pressure test the joint other than just opening the water
supply?
And finally, (although I guess this is pretty important), how do I slip
in
the tee fittings? Is is simply cutting out a small section of the
existing
tubing and bending both ends enough to slip in the fitting, or is there
a
more elegant solution?
Thanks,
Mike
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