In article ,
"Bob Mannix" writes:
In any case, it's a vast amount of lead surrounding a small amount of acidic
liquid, all of which is ingested - and, no, I wouldn't like to emulate them
as there would be a significant risk if you did it a lot. Comparing this
with any lead from solder fittings in a piped water system is ludicrous. Run
the kitchen tap for 10 seconds before drinking any water and you want have a
problem whatever your system is made of. As another poster said, the only
significant hazard from solder fittings is to the plumber heating them and
breathing the fumes, not to the householder passing water through them (so
to speak ) ), as with PCB manufacture. The only real dangers were where
(soft) water sat for long periods in lead pipes before being drunk (without
flushing). This is now almost unheard of. Removing lead from solder ring
fittings is just another example of the world going mad - the area of solder
presented to the water is minute and the system is regularly flushed.

Which reminds me... I did some plumbing for a friend recently, rerouting
some pipework which was in the way. It was copper so I used end-feed
solder fittings and lead-free solder. After I'd done this, the bathroom
floor was taken up for other reasons, and they deciced to reroute the
pipework again under the floor as it could be completely concealed that
way. I wasn't around so he got a plumber in to do it.

I looked at the job afterwards. My soldering is neat with no drips left
on the pipework (which would otherwise look like paint runs after painting),
and a nice small silver filet ring of solder just visible around the join.
The plumber's joins have got solder running over 6" down the pipe from
the join whereupon the solder turns into large drips, not to mention
a pool of solder on the floor under the job. There's probably the same
on the inside of the pipe too. One of the joins is a JG speedfit one too
(no idea why, but he'd probably used up his whole reel of solder by then;-)
The plumber is actually CORGI registered too (although this wasn't gas work).

Perhaps I should have posted this on the _There are no skilled workers left_
thread?

--
Andrew Gabriel
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