I have a crappy job to do next week. It is a bunch of threaded 4" stainless pipe that has been taped and doped and has a ton of leaks. The project is a back wash system for a water intake at a water plant. The manifold cant be removed (they dont want to) I'm planning on wire brushing the joints and running 3/32 stick rods, maybe tig if we can get it clean enough. if it was just one leak I wouldnt think much of it, but it is around 10 right now and I feel I will be chasing many more. Anyone run into anything like this? Any tricks that will make it go better?
I have done the same job but on 2". It sucks it was about 40 leaks on my project. The plumber they had had used regular dies instead of the HS dies and the die wore out causing the leaks. It did cause a chain of event leaks, fix one leaks started leaking somewhere else. I ended up back welding every joint. What I ended up doing is wire brushing off the excess, then using a propane torch burning out as much as I could then stick welding them. I feel for ya it will probably suck bad.
Ive been doing the same just heating the dope out and brushing as best as I could. Dont over heat your stainless though keep that in mind. TIGed all of them too. Good luck make it worth your wild!
Run a 6010 downhand pass first, then 316 tig over that.
The guys who threaded the pipe had no idea what they were doing. The cut threads up to 5 inches long! One union wouldnt seal so we took it apart, and the nipple they made went past the mating surfaces of the union. Its going to be alot of fun. Most of it is about 2" off of a wall. Im going to try the burn then wire brush then tig first.
Was that wrong? Should they not have threaded it that long?
I mean if two inches of threads is good then 5 is lots better, right?