1/4" copper ain't really 1/4"

Verdeboy

Verdeboy

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I was replacing a bad stretch of 1/4" copper for a swamp cooler, using the same type and brand of union I always use, and I could not get the ferrule over the end of the tubing. I used my tubing cutter several times, cleaned and sanded the end so there were no burrs or flaring, but still no go. The nut barely fit over the end, but the ferrule would not. I tried several ferrules as well. I even used a rubber mallet, which has done the trick before, but this time it was like trying to get a 1/4" piece of copper to fit over another 1/4" piece of copper.

Finally, I said the heck with it and replaced all the copper with poly tubing.

Is it possible for old copper tubing to swell, or is there something else going on here?
 
In this neck of the woods,its fairly common for copper to freeze and distort in the wintertime.But if you are in swamp cooler land,not likely.
 
Chances are you had some water in the pipe and it got stretched over the winter when it froze...
 
copper

It froze and grew before it broke. You may be able to squeeze it back to size by using the clamp from a flaring tool. Put it on, tighten it slightly, loosen it, rotate it 90 degrees, and repeat the process. Keep tightening, loosening and rotating until the two pieces of the clamp make contact. If you do it too quickly, or the tubing is too large, then the tubing will pinch and have to be cut off. I usually braze the 1/4" into a piece of 3/8" o.d. copper.
 
copper tube

The prob. with copper tube is that some are measured by the outside diameter, and others go by the inside, that may have been the prob., info only.Luck.
 
Frozen 1/4" Copper

They didn't winterize properly and there was no doubt water in that pipe. Instead of shmushing the copper with a flaring tool clamp, is it also possible to flare out the ferrule somehow?
 
Verdeboy said:
Is it possible for old copper tubing to swell, or is there something else going on here?
Click to expand...
The key here is "old copper tubing", so what happened was that it froze and expanded slightly, has happened to me many times, I thought I would fix the problem by going to poly, however that stuff breaks when it freeezes too! And it does freeze down here in swamp cooler land, even in Phoenix huh HJ?

Rancher
 
I ran into the same thing today. The brass fitting would not fit over the end of the 1/4" copper tubing. I took the parts back to Ace, and the clerk pull out a piece of 1/4" copper, and it fir W/O a problem. I noticed that the copper tubing in the store had a much thinner wall than my tubing. I have a roll of 1/4" that I have had for years (never used), and it is the same (the new fittings are a hair to small). Tomorrow I'll try a cooler supply store.
 
fitting

A 1/4" ferrule is a 1/4" ferrule. You will not find oversized or undersized ones. Your tubing may be out of round, but when it was made it was the proper size, unless it is a roll of #8 solid ground wire.
 
Verdeboy said:
Instead of shmushing the copper with a flaring tool clamp, is it also possible to flare out the ferrule somehow?
Click to expand...

It *might* be possible to put the end of the tube in some ice for a few minutes to shrink it a bit while warming the ferrule to make it larger just before putting the two pieces together -- nut first, of course -- but I have never actually tried that with old copper tubing and a ferrule.

Another option might be to use a flare nut and fitting if the tube is still sufficiently malleable for flaring.

As to sizes of copper tubes: I have heard refrigeration tubing is sized differently than the typical fractional tubing, but I do not know for sure about that.
 
tubing

Refrigeration tubing is "named" by the outside dimension, which is the same actual size as plumbing tubing. Plumbing tubing uses the nominal i.d., even though the actual i.d. changes depending on the tubing's classification.
 
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