Copper pipe soldering hard?

[GregW]

Sweat soldering copper is easy. Not setting the house on fire while you are doing it is the tricky part. Leave the plastic or go to a PEX system.

[Coldjensens]

We recently installed PEX. I learned a couple of things while looking into PEX v Copper. I spent about 50 hours on the internet and on the telphone discussing the pros and cons with experts.

Pex can freeze and not break. It is not recommended, but it has considerably more cold resistance than copper. I know this to be true from personal experience.

If you intsal PEX use a direct home run system to a large (1") manifold. This will increase your delivery volume and avoid volume/pressure drops when you use multiple devices. This also reduces the number of connections, you only have connections at the device and at the manifold. No connections in the walls. Most leaks occur at connections. PEX connections are advertised as stronger than the pipe, but that is only if they are done correctly. If you have hundreds of connections, some of them will be done wrong. It is hard to mess up a continuous run of pipe.

PEX can be bent into a slow curve if you have room. This eliminates the need for elbows and connections. Again this will help with delivery volume.

There are two kinds of PEX connectors. One kind decreases the inner diameter of the pipe at the fitting, the other kind does not. The latter kind is better, but more expensive. I do not remember which is which. If you have a lot of connections (i.e. trunk and branch system) a large number of fittings can decrease your delivery volume.

If you want to do any plumbing or repairs yourself you need a very expensive tool (I think it costs about $750). I could not rent one. I did find a plumber willing to lend me one and show me how to use it. Most plumbers will not lend you one, they want you to pay them to use it. That is how they make a living. My Plumber did most of our house, I just wanted to add some things and fix a pipe so he loaned it to me. He had already gotten enough out of my account to support his family for a few months.

PEX will supposedly resist piercing by nails or screws because it will move to the side rather than getting pierced. We found this to be untrue. Several of our pipes were pierced by an idiot with a nail gun. Even small finishing nails made holes. Be sure you know where your pipes are. If you get holes, you either have to splice in a piece and add connections or replace the whole run. I think that copper is probably more resistant to nails than PEX is. PEX is stiff and does nto readily move to the side.

Copper seems to give you slightly better delivery volume for the same sized pipe. You may want to oversize if you go with PEX.

Try to leave some slack in your PEX lines. That way if you need to move the pipe later, you can. If you get a leak (i.e. you hire the same nail gun idiot), you may be able to do the repair with a single connection. We had a lot of places where we ended up wishing that we had some slack in the pex becuase we added an electrical box, or a medicine cabinet and the PEX was in the way.

What most people consider water pressure is actually a volume issue. Small pipes increase pressure while decreasing volume. Consider one of the old water pick teeth cleaners. Tiny hole, little volume, high pressure, but you would nto want to take a shower with it. If you want a nice shower, focus on delivery volume, not pressure.

PEX costs more, but is net cheaper due to the labor difference. PEX is especially good for re-plumbing an old house. You can run the PEX like wire. Our house is baloon framed so it was incredibly easy to run PEX. Copper would have been a nightmare.

[studedude]

There was a German company that made circular solder. It came in different pipe sizes. You could clean and flux the joint. Insert the ring into the female fitting, insert the male fitting after you completed all joints you came back with a torch and heated to sweat joint. You could see the solder come to the top of the joint when heated to proper temp. I don't know if their still around. I haven't sold HVAC equip for a while. Like everyone else has advised unless you are talking about 2 or 3 joints stick with PEX.