Good Morning plumbers

so my service plumbing fears are two....flood a home/business AND/OR burn down a home/business!

Restaurant owner would like me to remove the ball valves (see pic) and cap two 1/2 copper lines.

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OK so one time in a residence I was capping a 1/2 copper line and the heat from soldering a cap traveled through the copper pipe and caused the insulation in contact with the pipe in the next bay to start to smoke. I think I lost 6 months of life when I saw smoke escaping from the wall in a 600K 2 story home. I grabbed my hammer and opened up the dry wall to find indeed that the insulation was indeed smoldering. Yikes.

So I would prefer to cut open the wall and make sure there is no flammable insulation BUT the owner does not want me to do this. This is a commercial restaurant so I imagine there is no insulation in the wall and the pipes themselves may or may not be insulated.

So AM I being overly cautious? Any helpful input on this is great. A small pay check is not worth the risk right?

How far from the wall will you be capping these lines anything more than a 2" you should have no risk of fire if you use a small enough tip. And don't over heat the fitting

if you look at the pic you can see I will have to "de sweat" 1/2 copper 90's leaving about 3/4" of copper pipe off the wall and then solder on two caps.

Soldering the caps onto "closed" lines may be an interesting task. If possible, I would use Sharkbite caps. However, I cannot imagine EVER heating a copper line so hot that it set ANYTHING on fire in the next bay

Yes, I thought about using shark bite caps too. Now these two lines drop from the ceiling down the wall. If I shut off the cold feed to the building and open the ball valves and release the water I should be able to desolder the copper 90's right? any residual water will boil off and I can then twist and pull the 90's off leaving a short stub out and then Shark Bite caps. But I would prefer to solder on caps. I guess I'm being overly cautious on this project.

Why not just cut them off and cap with john guest or sharkbite end caps?

Last time I tried soldering on a cap I couldn't the air inside the pipe expands when heated and kept popping the cap off or the steam blowing holes in the melted solder.

if you have any water at all it will be a mild nightmare to solder on a cap.
you might use a male adapter so any steam will not push the cap off. then screw on a brass cap.

sum,when i saw that you replied i thought maybe you were going to offer him some no-corode at a reduced price..

that is why I said trying to solder the caps on might be "interesting".

great advice folks.
wow thanks.

sweat on male adapter with small tip and low heat/ add brass cap

done deal.

Mucho appreciation for this site, the pros and semi-pros



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I'm 100% with Packy....female adapters with brass plugs.We only use sharks as a temporary measure.