In this video we are going to look at putting a t piece into a rigid copper pipe.
This can be difficult to do and I once had to do this a few years ago and there was
actually a boiler at the top and at the bottom it was concreted into a concrete
floor so you couldn't actually move the pipe at all. If you need to put a t piece in there
you can't actually move those pipes because they are rigid so that does make it
extremely difficult to put a fitting in like that even if it's a compression
fitting. You do need some movement to be able to be able to
get a new fitting in a pipe like that. So the way you do it is by using a slip
coupling. That is a normal couplar, that is a solder ring fitting couplar. If we
take a piece of copper pipe and push that in there it will actually
physically stop where that line is there, there is actually a stop in the fitting and
that prevents you from pushing the pipe all the way through. The same goes for an
end feed coupler that has a stop in the centre and the same goes for a
compression fitting. You can only actually push the pipe
halfway in that is so you always make a good joint. In instances where
you need to join into something like that you're gonna need a slip coupler.
The slip coupler looks like that and there actually is no stop in the center
of it so that means that you can push the pipe all the way through like so. You
are going to need two of these to make the joint work. So what we need to do is
cut a section of that out and then we need to use a slip coupler at the top and at the
bottom and then in the middle there we will have our T piece coming out. There is
quite a lot of work involved in doing this but it is probably the only way you
can actually join into a pipe that is rigid that you can't move. Another
problem with pipes like you can't actually get the pipe slice in because
there is no room. That has actually been clipped in position in a couple of
places so we cannot actually move that pipe. So we're going to have to cut through
that using a hack saw.
I can't actually get the blade out now so I'm just going to have to loosen that off.
It is important when you do this that you leave enough room. What you don't want to do
is make it too small and have to cut the pipe again. So we're now going to make
the second cut. If you can't get in with the deburring tool you can use a
piece of abrasive paper. So they are now burr free I'm just going to check a
fitting on there you can see that goes on there easily, and also on that end.
We are now going to use the piece of copper pipe that we took out and the overall
length needs to be fourteen and a half centimeters roughly. We're going to
put that T piece in the middle there.
Every time I make a cut with the pipe slice I'm going to deburr it using the
deburring tool. So we can now push that part into the fitting and I'll cut that to
length with the pipe slice. So I can now push that in there you see we've got
the exact, correct length. So I'm now cutting the last piece and that is going
to go in that part of the T. Because the slip couplings can slide all the way
down the pipe like so it's a good idea to put a mark on to ensure that you get
them in the correct place. The last thing you want is it to slip down like that and
not make a good joint. So a good way of doing that is to get a normal cuplar like so
with a stop in, push that on there
and then we could put a mark using a permanent marker and we know what exactly where that fitting needs to be. I'm actually just going to mark it on
the wood there. Then I'm going to do the same with the top.
When you fit this piece you can actually do all the soldering in one go or you can
solder the T piece first which will make it a little bit easier. So in this
example I'm just going to solder this part first. So just like I did before I'm
going to clean all of the copper pipe up using the scotch brite pad. I will also
clean the other ends up as well because they're going to be soldered shortly.
It's also a good idea if you have an old fitting to cut a piece of scotch brite
pad and just clean the inside of the fitting this one is actually brand new
so there's no need to do that. I am now going to take a flux brush and I'm going to
apply some flux to each of the pieces of copper. Once we have done that we can then
push that into the fitting.
We can then just check we've got the pipes the correct way around before we solder it.
I'm now just going to use a paper towel to wipe off any of the excess flux.
I'm then just going to stand that up in a fitting just so we can solder it. I'm now just
going to apply some heat to that until the solder exits from the fitting.
So if you take a look at that you can see that we've got solder exiting from
all three parts of the tee. If you're not familiar with solder ring fittings these
are a superb way of joining copper pipe and they actually have the solder built
into the fitting so they are very, very easy to use.
Obviously for professional plumbers they'll probably use something like that
which is called an end feed fitting and if you use these you do have to use
additional solder. So that is now cool enough to touch we now just need to apply
some fluk to those two parts. I'm now going to apply the flux to the two pipes.
We can now take the slip couplings, we'll just slide those down, I'm going to slide
the fitting all the way up there like so, then I'm going to insert the pipe.
I'm going to move the bottom slip coupling up and the top slip coupling down. You
will remember that earlier I put a mark on there so we need to get the bottom of
the slip coupling level with that. So the top one just needs to come down a bit
more. So we've got the two slip couplings in the exact correct position aligned
with the two marks. We now just need to remove any excess flux.
Because we're soldering near timber and plasterboard I'm just going to use the
heat mat, I'm just going to tape that in position to prevent anything from
getting scorched or set on fire. So get the blow torch and
apply a little bit of heat to each of the fittings.
You can remove the heat once you see the solder exiting from the fitting.
So that's how to import a T piece into a rigid copper pipe you can now connect another
fitting on there you can do whatever you want with that, it is a good idea to
flush out the pipe obviously before you use it to get rid of the flux etc. I hope you have
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