How drain boiler for repair?

@mattmia2 ”The paste is just a heat sink. Putting it on the iron fitting will just make the iron fitting soak up more heat.”

Oh, makes sense. But I would want to put heat paste on the tee’s joints, right? It would protect them from coming loose, but wouldn’t that act as a heat sink too?

Channel locks, squeeze to collapse nipple: WDITOTATFTT! (Why Didn’t I Think of That and Thanks for the Tip!)

TL;DR: I basically would like to know if the very shallow cuts in the short nipple shown in the first photo below would cause a leak if I soldered a new 1-1/2” adaptor on. (Straight desoldering didn’t work but @mattmia2’s suggestion did: “If it isn't coming off, I'd file the 2 sides until you file through the copper to the solder and heat it up and peel it off. Be careful not to heat it so much that you start bending the pipe.” I did that and I did overcut, but just a little….) I figure solder would fill those furrows up? I really don’t want to have to remove that small nipple from the tee! If you can let me know soon and ignore the rest of this that’d be great, because now that I have the stubborn adaptor off I’d like to go ahead and put things back together. (The globby stuff is heat paste. I recount the full drama after the photo, for other diy’ers who might face the same problem.)

So, last we left off I got some good advice about how to remove the darn 1-1/2”adaptor that’s got a slow leak. Finally I took a deep breath (and an Adderall and a multivitamin and Xanax— just kidding, only coffee) and plowed in.

I decided to buy the Turbo Torch STK-11 double barrel tip, which they say is good for soldering 1-1/2” to 6”. I tried desoldering with no luck (even though no luck I show photos of the attempt below). Nothing budged after both twisting and hammering down.

So I decided to go to Plan B, suggested by @mattmia2, see above. That worked! (See photos). As you can see I cut a bit into the nipple, and I ask about that above. The adaptor dry-fits on only about halfway by hand, and what solder that’s there doesn’t seem to want to melt anymore, but I figure I’ll sand and wire brush and put an old coupler on the adaptor and bang it on with a hammer.

I am going to put isolator flange valves around the circulator as @EdTheHeaterMan and @hot_rod suggested, but not a sweat one on top (which was hot_rod’s good suggestion) because space is tight and the sweat valves are a bit longer and I thought it all might not fit, though I might have been wrong.

Here’s the torch tip:

The next stuff didn’t work. But I was paranoid about overheating. I now think, because cutting and peeling worked so well, with straight desoldering it might have come off if I had kept at it, making sure not to go cherry red. I was afraid of “welding” the fittings together, but now I wonder if that’s a myth, even with this hotter tip.

The following did work, except for my little cuts into the nipple. The peeling-off photos are after heat of course. First, cutting with the multitool or whatever it’s called:

This is as far as it goes hand tight, but hopefully I can hammer it the rest of the way:

Oops, this post is an accident. Please see the previous one.

@mattmia2, will do.