scary soldered fittings

[mutley racers]

Can you guy's tell me about dodgy soldered fittings you have soldered and later came back to haunt you?

As in, when you solder it, do you know it could turn out to be dodgy?

How do you know?

Is it something it does?

Would love to hear your stories.

Cheers

P.s. i have just started in the trade and am scared for my first big leak

 

[helpsy]

Hi Mutley racers
I too have just started out as well.Quite daunting in the real world.
I guess over time with lots of work under your belt,it's going to be one of those occupational law of averages that it will happen.
I expect there isn't one experienced person on this forum who hasn't had a problem with this at some point in their career.
I expect that as we're fresh in the trade you would probably expect to get more now than later(with experience).
Just pressure test your work and visual checks are all you can do
Good Luck

 

[Mushybees]

I know of a guy who gave up plumbing because he couldn't sleep at night worrying about leaks.
Screw that, I wouldn't give a second thought to a soldered joint done correctly.

 

[newbie1]

thats the point of the question you can never be 100% even after 30yrs you can get a hair from the brush or a bit of grit in the joint and it will leak
best advice
clean every joint dont take a chance get flux on and heat until flux has run then start at back of joint and hopefully it will run to the front
and yes i had one pop hours after i had left the premises,,lucky it was a void property

 

[safc]

If you worry about every fitting you fit, you will go mad. After a while it will become second nature and you wont even think about it

 

[Phil]

Who here fluxes the inside of the fitting? I do because thats how I was shown, but alot of the more experienced plumbers riddicule the idea.

 

[stevetheplumber]

Who here fluxes the inside of the fitting? I do because thats how I was shown, but alot of the more experienced plumbers riddicule the idea.

all the self cleaning fluxes ive come across say to only flux the male half of the joint this helps to stop excess flux getting in to the pipe work
i to was taught to flux both halves but this was with the old style flux

with self cleaning if the pipe is realy dirty i often warm it and clean it with the flux brush prior to inserting it this way you can see it cleaned

 

[Carl86]

Its good practice to flux the end of the pipe instead of the iside of a fitting. You should never flux the inside of fittings when doing work on gas.

 

[Jimbob]

so they say.

You definately got to have big balls to be a plumber...