You won't burn your fingers off, take it from someone who has been cooked too many times to remember. It only takes propane to remove a shut off. I've lost my grip on an oxy acetylene torch and the flame ran across my hand and fingers of the other hand on the way down. That is so hot it almost feels cold for a very short time... I thought they were going to start calling me Char lee.
Don't be afraid of working with propane, just be respectful. When I work in a tight place that could cause a problem, I have an aluminum cake pan I use as a heat shield. I put the rim against the wall and the bottom closest to the flame. That gives some dead space for the heat to dissipate and I haven't lost a house yet to my plumbing. Lost one to a chimney fire, but I had some help with that... ----- Original Message ----- From: Scott Howell To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2009 5:58 AM Subject: Re: [BlindHandyMan] Plumbing rough in Dan, I just cut them off. I haven't had enough experience with a torch to trust myself not to burn the house down or my fingers off. grin The former gate valves were soldered on. However, when I had my previous townhouse, they had compression fittings on those old valves and I was able to just replace those valves with ball valves since the compression ring wasn't going to come off. I swear by these valves, I have not had one go bad on me yet. In fact I'm going to replace the old gate valve on the supply line for the water heater since the old one amazed me and held, but barely and it required a set of plyers to move it. Don't want frozen valves in an emergency. grin On Oct 12, 2009, at 9:41 PM, Dan Rossi wrote: > Scott, > > You said that you ran around your house replacing all the shut-offs > with > the ball valves. How did you remove the old valves? Did you heat them > and pull them apart? Or did you cut them off and hope for enough > slack? > Or, were the old one's compression fittings also and you were able > to pry > them apart? > > Just curious. > > -- > Blue skies. > Dan Rossi > Carnegie Mellon University. > E-Mail: [email protected] > Tel: (412) 268-9081 > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
