I'm with you on this one.

I had to put in a 3/4-inch stop-and-waste ball valve just after the water
meter on a house I bought because the old valve before the water meter
couldn't be shut off completely. So, I needed a reliable shut-off so I
could do work in other parts of the house. I guess I did almost everything
wrong that a person could do. I did disconnect the water meter so the area
I was working on was completely dry. I started with a regular propane torch
but that took forever and the solder melted but it kept looking like a cold
solder. Got done, connected it up, and of course it leaked. Did the whole
thing again using MAPP gas but didn't know I needed a different type of
nozzle on the MAPP gas. This time, I heard a huge POW! while heating the
pipe. It was some kind of rubber gasket in the ball valve that blew out.
Did the whole thing again with a new ball valve and -- thinking I was
smart -- I cut the copper pipe off above the valve, took the whole assembly
to a place where I could solder everything with the pipe horizontal, then
connected everything back up and used a union to solder the pipe back in
place where I had cut it off. That, by some miracle, worked.

Then, after all of that, it dawned on me that all I needed to do was do what
you had suggested -- just use a ball valve with female threads, cut a
section of pipe out, solder male threaded adapters to the pipe, screw the
male adapters into the female threads in the valve, then solder the ends of
the pipe back in place using two unions. That would have meant no heat on
the valve at all, and no trying to solder copper to brass. DUH.


"Lp1331 1p1331" wrote in message
...
If I were doing this job, I would use a valve with female threads and 2
male adapters. I'd sweat one m/a to one of the pipes, install the valve,
sweat a piece of pipe about a foot or so, if space permits, to the other
m/a, then screw it to the valve, and lastly hook that piece of copper to
the rest of the system. That way there is no chance of messing up the
valve. Of course the main reason I would do it that way is that I only
use silver solder. Besides not liking / trusting soft solder, after more
years than I'd like to admit in the a/c /ref trade using silver solder
and almost no experience with soft solder, I always have the stuff handy
to SS. But regardless of which solder it usually seems easier to me to
sweat copper-copper than copper-brass. YMMV Good luck Larry