Water Heaters

Pipe Cutting

OK, so with whatever method you're using, you have to project where the copper actually will need to come to. The copper must fit into the brass fitting that you see in the picture.

Mark the copper where you should cut it. Take your pipe cutter (or hacksaw if that's all you have) and cut the pipe. If you happen to have bought a pipe cutter just for this job and don't really know how this device is supposed to cut a pipe, just loosen the know enough so that the cutter fits nicely over the pipe. The round blade will do the cutting. It's not the same kind of cutting a hacksaw or knife does really, it's more like scoring. Tighten the knob until it is pretty snug. Then rotate the cutter around the pipe (you should go in the direction towards the 'open' side of the cutter, see the picture). Once you've gone around a couple of times, tighten the know a bit more and repeat the process. You keep doing this sequence of tighten, rotate, tighten, rotate, until finally the cutter will go completely through the pipe. Don't hurry the process as you can crush the pipe and that is bad.

Preparing The Copper

To prepare the copper pipe for soldering, you need to debur the end of the pipe that you just cut. This is done with a deburring tool that is typically attached to the pipe cutter (see image). This is inserted into the pipe and you twist the cutter to remove the burr from the pipe. Those burrs can make a lot of noise and restrict water flow.

Now take some very fine sand paper. They have special strips of sand paper for preparing pipes for solder. You want to completely remove any old tarnished coating on the copper. The surface must be clean and free of oil, debri, dirt, scum, corrosion,etc... Just nice clean bare copper. Wrap the paper around the pipe and twist. You should sand until you get nice shiny copper about 2 inches above where the joint will be.

Now sand or use a wire brush made for preparing the inside of pipes. Clean the brass fitting in the coupler. Then apply flux to the outside of the pipe, the last inch or so, and apply flux to the inside of the brass fitting. Put a healthy coat on both pieces. Flux helps the solder to bond to the copper.

Before you start welding pieces of metal together, assemble the pieces on the pipe just like they came (See diagram for sample). This is designed in such a way that you have to have all these pieces on before you solder the flange. Then you'll tighten it down over the flange and get your water tight fit. Double check that it's all on like it's supposed to and then let's solder it!