[Salem03079]

Can I heat a 1/2 " copper elbow and remove a piece of pipe - that I cut mistakingly while removing my wooden sill?

I've tried to re insert a new piece of copper into one of these before and couldn't it to fit back into the previously sweated elbow.

Any tricks you have for this? Note, the other side of the elbow is attached to a FHW baseboard that is completely drained.

[creahands]

Heat elbow and clean inside with a pipe brush. This will remove excess solder.

Flux inside of elbow and outside of pipe. Slide together and solder. Make sure opposite side of elbow is still soldered.

Chuck

[massplumber2008]

Hi Salem...

Here's how I do this type of job:

First, I clean the both sides of the elbow with sandpaper and sometimes a cleaning brush IF the pipe/fitting are really dirty. Then you'll apply flux to both sides of the elbow/fitting. This is necessary in case you overheat the joint and disturb the other side of the fitting.

Next, you'll prep the pipe you plan to put into the fitting. Clean it and flux it and place it close by.

Heat the joint you want to unsolder... directing the heat away from the other side of the fitting.

Then you'll pull the pipe out as needed and use a thin rag to wipe away at the joint.

At this point you'll keep heating the fitting slightly and then start to heat the pipe to be placed into the joint.

Slide the pipe into the unsoldered joint and then begin to heat the pipe working in toward the fitting and then solder the joint.

In this way you don't let the solder in the joint cool down so you don't need to worry about issues with solder pooling/solidifying in the bottom of the fitting and causing issues.

If that fails to work and this starts to get sloppy you can reheat the joint and use a flux brush to pull out/wipe away any excess solder. Let all cool and then you can clean and reflux the joint... heat and solder as usual.

If the other side of the joint gets disturbed, hit it with some more flux and then solder the joint. It should take easily since you previously cleaned and fluxxed it for just that case!

Hope this helps you and others that may read this in the future!

Mark