lead solder? Uh oh!

I noticed in my tool box that I had a roll of lead solder with my other lead free solder, and am now worried that I might have used the lead solder to run some exposed copper in the house in the water distribution pipes and to the hot water heater about five months ago.
So, is there a way to tell the difference. I am guessing not. I am willing to cut out all the fittings and add new ones and sweat up with a solder I know for sure is lead free, but if there is a way to tell before, I would love to know.

I am pretty sure this is a shot in the dark, but couldn't hurt to ask.....right?
bill (gets to practice sweating pipes in school and at home )

solder

If you did use it then your piping is no different than about 10 million, 50 million, or more, homes that were done with it before the lead free solder hysteria occured. Don't worry about it. In fact, unless you did a perfect solder job, the water may not even contact the solder in the joint.

bill, I say e-gads no no no, the sky is falling.............

Hey now, don't make fun! I am in class right now and we are on the safety chapter and all the info in there makes you all nervouse. I at least need to replace one 90* elbow since I noticed a teeny leak starting. So my next question is......is there a way to heat up the elbow enough to remove it and clean up the pipe, or should I just cut the pipe shorter and move on with my possibly lead filled water drinking life?

elbow

If you can get the water out then you can disassemble the joint and redo it. If you are paranoid about the solder, many hardware stores, etc., have a test kit that you dampen and then place against the joint. If it is lead solder the swab changes color. It is the way inspectors check for the proper solder.

Cool, I never knew that. I may do it just to know for piece of mind. But if the rest of the plumbing I did not touch has lead solder, I will just live with it until I get bored and redo the whole laundry room area where most of this is located.

I am going to try and remove the old elbow and install a new one.

I just don't want to find myself with any side effects down the road that will not allow my to keep working. Gotta make a living, but if there is no real world harm that will be done, I will live with it.

Thanks for helping out the greenhorn!

Lead solder

Dpn't wprr about it. Most of the other pumbing in your house was probably done with lead solder already, so your concern is unwarranted. Don't forget that houses at the turn of the century had real lead pipes and people survived them .

HTH,

mariner

If it is on the HW side then there is realy no need to worry unless you like drinking hot water from the tap.

1 thing you can do is try and scratch the solder on the fittings with a flat screwdriver corner. Lead is so soft it will easily scratch. Test a piece of lead free and then test the lead and you will see what I mean.

dont worry about it

their are literally 100 million homes still out there
with lead solder in them........

your one or two joints are not
going to make any difference....


throw away the solder and forget about it....

sweep it under the rug and forget about it...



the only trouble I know of ever having with lead solder
or non water soluable flux was a dirty -dis-honest builder
who found out about the small mistake the plumber made
(water soluable flux)

then he was not willing to pay the bills becasue they
found out you might have used some....

he found this chicken-shit
loop-hole in the code to keep from paying their
plumbing bills

its happenned in our town once......

the plumber was not happy at all..

Most places have enough minerals to coat the lead after a few months. Therefore, as long as you aren’t running distilled water threw your pipes you will be fine after a few months of use.

This will also deal with the flux residue since it will dissolve in a few weeks.

I would suggest using bottled water for kids and pregnant adults for a month after you work on any pipes that may contain lead.

solder

I would suggest using bottled water for kids and pregnant adults for a month after you work on any pipes that may contain lead.

Now why would they have to do that. Until fairly recently, 50/50 solder was the ubiquitous solder of choice, and we never told anybody they could not use the water for a month, and nobody died from it. Lead pipes were not only used at the turn of the century, they were being used for the main water line in the Chicago area in the 60's.

At low doses, Lead mainly affects the growth of nerve cells, therefore like everything else, it’s better to air on the side of caution and have children, and pregnant beings avoid lead exposure. It could create a 0.1% drop in intelligence.

I agree that some of the hysteria is a bit much. I have used lead all the time for soldering electronics for years and my lead test came back clean. I even remember mercury-wetted relays at the phone company.

Or maybe I am wrong and we could all be a lot smarter if we had just stayed away from really bad things like Di-hydrogen monoxide when we were kids.
http://www.dhmo.org/

Where I live big brother changed the allowable limit for arsenic from 16 ppb to 10 ppb on our community well. But all the single family homes that have the same thing in their water don't have to comply.

So I take all the crap like this that the government tells us with a grain of salt. When we comply its going to cost us a lot. No logic, but who said government is?

I believe it's just another government way of creating jobs. I believe it's a lot of lawyers creating more work for themselves. If lead in solder was so darned bad, why don't they make every home that has lead on their copper re-pipe their homes.

I think this all started in the 60s & 70s when people started to put rocks and bricks in their toilet tanks to save water. Boy, that perked up the plumbing service calls. The schools were used when our children came home with all this stuff.........save the world. I don't know where it was going, but they jammed it down our throats.

Di-hydrogen monoxide

Great Web site, Bill. We're surrounded by the stuff here in Florida, and it's usually widely distributed by hurricanes as well. In some regions, there's almost none to be found, though, and it turns out it's actually necessary for life (in safe quantities). It's a scary world.