When I started all this I swore to myself I would stay away from plumbing. I’m comfortable around electrons and wires. But water and pipes?! Well, it turned out that my first rebuilding task in the house would be plumbing.

The laundry area as it was when we bought the house. It’s located in the hallway that leads to the bathroom.

The laundry area in the house is in the hallway between the dining and the bathroom. We really wanted it to be in the garage, but there’s no drain there and the list of work is long enough as it is. So we decided to simply clean up the existing laundry area for now:

• put up some new greenboard
• tile the floor
• stack up the appliances (instead of leaving them side-by-side)
• put up new shelves
• close the area with folding doors

Since I was about to put up new greenboard in this area, I figured out I might as well clean-up the plumbing by installing a tidy valve box.

Only thing: the valves were directly soldered to the pipes. Hiring a plumber for such a small job? How much would it cost me?

Oh well. The Depot had a sale on a soldering kit. Not even half the price of what I would have to pay a plumber to visit me. I might as well get my feet wet!

So here I was, with my propane torch and a book teaching sweat soldering 101. Luckily I wasn’t under time pressure… it took me literally hours and 2 attempts to get that stuff right! Be kind - don’t laugh at me.

Tip: Empty your pipes as well as possible. Any remaining water will make your task very difficult. In my case, the pipes were vertical and full of water. Shutting down the main valve and leaving the taps in the house open was not enough. Modern constructions usually have a purge valve, located very low - of course, this house doesn’t have one. Second best is to locate the lowest tap in the system, often an outside bib, and leave it open. If that is still not enough (remember that everything is pretty much level in an Eichler, a one-story house resting on a concrete slab…) you will need to be creative. One thing that worked for me: blow some air through another pipe from the same system (cold or hot) and force the trapped water out… believe me, that works, even from one room to another. Copper is not really tasty, but it isn’t that bad neither!

One year later - was a propane torch the right tool to buy?

Not really. I wish I hadn’t been cheap on that one. The MAPP gas torch was only about $10 more expensive than the Propane one. And the time and frustration you might spare yourself with a MAPP torch are well worth the extra cost. MAPP allows you to heat the copper much faster. This is very convenient when you deal with pipes that you cannot empty properly. In one instance I had to repair a leaky manifold still full of water by brazing small leaves of copper to it - this was literally impossible with the Propane torch. So go for it.