There is already something new and improved in place of sweating Copper. When they installed my new furnace, I kept hearing a strange sound from the basement, and not smelling hot solder and Copper. I asked, and they showed me their new gadget. All the fittings are crimped on with a hand-held, battery operated tool. The fittings are a bit different as they have a very small O ring inside of them. You just cut the pipe to length, slip it into the fitting, latch the crimper on, and zzzzzzziiiiip! You have an, apparently, pretty solid joint.
Unfortunately, the crimper was pretty expensive, I found them for about 1600 bucks online. I think I'll just rent one if I need it. I didn't look for the fittings, but can guess that they are a bit more expensive than the regular fittings as well. There are also the SharkBight fittings which seem pretty interesting, although a friend of mine who used them said that you definitely have to support and fix the piping and joints pretty well. he said that you can get the joints to leak if you torque the joints enough. -- Blue skies. Dan Rossi Carnegie Mellon University. E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (412) 268-9081
