Shattering copper pipe

[bungeejumper]

I learned something new this week. I was clearing out some redundant copper pipework in a commercial building that we run, and I took a mini hacksaw to a 15mm pipe run that had been installed about ten years ago. (There was no room to get a pipe cutter into that particular location, and I wasn't planning on keeping the pipe anyway, so I'd decided on the quick and dirty approach. )

Imagine my surprise, about halfway through the saw cut, when the pipe more or less exploded under the slight vibration from the hacksaw's teeth. It had shattered into six or eight fragments, and by golly they were almost as thin as paper. Not the slightest bit like any 15mm pipe I've ever worked with.

Our regular plumber laughed. Nought point six millimetre copper, he said. They do it these days to save a few quid on the copper. There are three regular "official" thicknesses, ranging from 0.7mm to 1.0mm, and several thinner gauges that have cheapskate written all over them - and those grades aren't used by reputable people.

Googling the matter makes it apparent that that wasn't the only issue. The word is that, because the thinner gauge pipe has different characteristics, some of it can't be bent with a bending spring because (you guessed it), it'll distort and shatter. There are dark rumours that these thinner-walled pipes are also made of harder or more crystalline metal than the traditional stuff. Or then again, maybe they've aged differently? I think I can remember old copper pipes that had gone rigid with age or after particularly hot soldering. Am I wrong?

Anyway, my interest has been piqued. Can anyone shed any light on this issue?

BJ

[Imbiber]

I started an apprenticeship as a pipe fitter/ welder in 1967. Sometime during my apprenticeship or soon after the price of copper soared, I can't remember why. Yorkshire tube introduced a thin wall copper (YTW) pipe which was much thinner, harder and could not be bent. Could this be the culprit? I seem to recall it had a blue stipe running along the length.

[Laughton]

Can't shed light on shattering pipe but have recently suffered from pinholes in 15mm pipe (cold outlet from heating feed and expansion tank in the loft down to the boiler which is a long long way away). The pipework had green gunge oozing out of the hole and down down the pipe. Emergency plumber replaced 2m of the pipe in the airing cupboard.

Have now become paranoid so checking airing cupboard regularly and today noticed wht looks like another pinhole just lower than the replaced pipe and at the bend where the pipe disappears through the floor.

Nightmare as I suppose it means the next plumber won't be able to do anything without cutting a big hole in the ceiling below and maybe the plasterboard at the tops of the walls in the 3 rooms before he gets to the utility room where the boiler resides.

Quite a few YouTube videos on copper pipe pinholes so obviously not that rare a condition.

What a start to the year!

[Urbandreamer]

There are dark rumours that these thinner-walled pipes are also made of harder or more crystalline metal than the traditional stuff. Or then again, maybe they've aged differently? I think I can remember old copper pipes that had gone rigid with age or after particularly hot soldering. Am I wrong?

Anyway, my interest has been piqued. Can anyone shed any light on this issue?

BJ

From long ago memory of school metalwork, copper does suffer from hardening, making it brittle. We were told to anneal it. Then as you say, it's likely that, even if originally pure*, it isn't after some time. Being thin, anything moving in from the surface has less distance to travel.

As for saving a bob, the pipe did the job didn't it? What was it for anyway? Water pipe is different from that used in refrigeration. Thinner walls conduct heat faster.

In truth pure metals are rarely used. What we call aluminum is usually an alloy. "Copper" water pipes are an alloy of copper and silver, though usually 99.9% copper.

https://www.copper.org/applications/plu ... _stds.html

If you follow the link you'll find that they supply pipes of differing "temper" and alloy. Temper is a heat treatment that can increase hardness at the cost of making things brittle.

You might want to question how much your plumber knows about copper, given that plumber actually means lead worker. Then again he may know a lot about water pipes, and less about pipes used for other purposes or lead roofing, installed by... a plumber.

[servodude]

I'm getting flashbacks to modelling the stresses in bends using FDTD compression models !
And also to the time I helped my dad dig out the old lead pipes to find out they weren't there anymore and the water was coming in on what was basically some sort of oxidation/calcified dirt tube

[AF62]

Can't shed light on shattering pipe but have recently suffered from pinholes in 15mm pipe (cold outlet from heating feed and expansion tank in the loft down to the boiler which is a long long way away). The pipework had green gunge oozing out of the hole and down down the pipe. Emergency plumber replaced 2m of the pipe in the airing cupboard.

Had exactly that issue in house I owned some years ago. The opinion at the time was the house had been constructed in the 1980s when cheap copper pipe was being used and it wasn’t an uncommon problem.

After the second insurance claim to replace the ceiling where a pipe had leaked, I decided to bite the bullet and replaced all the copper pipe in the house.

[Laughton]

After the second insurance claim to replace the ceiling where a pipe had leaked, I decided to bite the bullet and replaced all the copper pipe in the house.

Not sure about a bullet - in this house that would be a cannonball. It's making me ill just trying to imagine how they would go about it other than going all electric .