copper on steam

scott75

I am a HO who does maintenance work for a living. Not familiar with steam until I bought my house. Since cash is tight and I like to tinker I'm a big DIY'er (much to the shigrin of my wife). Anyway, I was trying to remove a radiator (one pipe system) to put it in a different room. When the radiator elbow would not come of the riser, I tried heating it with a torch. I came off all right. I sweated it off. The elbow had a brass(?) or wrought copper(?) (I've never heard of this before) fitting sweated to copper. At least I don't know of anything else that one would solder. Pipe is very old, corroded and dirty but still looks like copper by appearance. So the guy at the hardware store (I know, big mistake) told me I could relpace it with schedule L copper, which I did. Now every time my oil burner fires on I can hear this pipe begin to expand and when the stat satisfies and burner turns off, I can then hear this pipe begin to contract as it cools. I took the insulation off the pipe and the color is actually changing to yellows and reds. Is any copper approved for steam heat? If not, why didn't the copper that I removed do this? I know I need to change this ASAP to galvanized. Thanks for any and all input that you can provide.

Scott

Big Ed

Copper on steam

It really is not recommended to use copper on supplies, Too much fast expantion for tight configurations. I would use iron pipe when ever. You can use copper for wet returns but need to use dielectric couplings where it connects to iron..

scrook_2

ideally...

you'd use black iron (not galvanized) on returns too, Absolutely use black iron and eithee cast iron or malliable iron fittings on the steem supply lines. CI fittings are traditional, they can be broken w/ a hammer to dissassemble years later though malliable will work fine too, just a little harder to dismantle in future decades.

Earthfire

Scott

use Black Iron not galvanized to replace the copper tubing.

Josh M.

Bottom line is copper is like using bed sheets for rope. You never know when it will break. Black iron I think is easier for the do-it-yourselfer andyhow.