Question about sweating street elbows.

[Eclecticmn]

I never sweated copper street elbows before. I fit them together and there seems to be some wiggle room. More than with a normal pipe and fitting. Will this fitting with the smaller diameter of the street elbow inside the normal pipe solder OK?

 

[John Gayewski]

I never sweated copper street elbows before. I fit them together and there seems to be some wiggle room. More than with a normal pipe and fitting. Will this fitting with the smaller diameter of the street elbow inside the normal pipe solder OK?

You just have to be sure to Fill the cup entirely. It'll sweat just fine. There's a possibility of flowing solder into the fitting. Just watch your not dumping solder into the actual fitting. If some goes in its fine.

Try to get the fitting to sit squarely on the shoulder.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Jadnashua]

Messed up, so I deleted it. Happens sometimes...

 

[Mr tee]

Jim got it flipped. K is the thicker walled, M the thinner.

 

[hj]

The I.D> of tubing has NOTHING to fo with how they go together. The o.d. of the "male" piece has to be the same as the i.d. of the female/socket piece.

 

[Eclecticmn]

Someone said that a street elbow should only be sweated inside a cup of another fitting, not a pipe. They said you should push the street elbow to hit bottom of the cup then fill with solder. I inserted the narrow end of a street union into a pipe interior and it wiggled. I think I will avoid the street union use and use a normal elbow and a piece of pipe.

 

[wwhitney]

Yes, fittings are generally not made for inserting into pipes, it would be a very rare fitting that is so designed. Copper sweat fittings either have solder cups (made to accept pipe), or street ends (sized to match a pipe and go into a solder cup).

So what you were contemplating would be akin to taking a piece of 1/2" type K copper pipe (ID = 0.527") and sticking a piece of 3/8" pipe inside of it (OD = 0.500") to make a joint. The fact that your 3/8" pipe may have been a street end of a 3/8" sweat fitting (in this example) is immaterial.

Cheers, Wayne