It is, if you can handle the added cost. For industrial jobs, the overriding concern is price, even if the expensive way is far better in the long run... (Trust me on this, half my job is reworking stuff where the first contractor did it the cheap way. 10 years later, we're back to rebuild it right.)
Copper's big advantage is you can shut off the air, cut into the line and sweat in a tee easily and quickly for feeding new drops, something you can't do with (black or galvanized) steel pipe. I would also suggest silver-brazing the copper to avoid joint failures, but that's my old HVAC training coming through.
If you need pipe hangers, the HVAC and Plumbing suppliers can handle them - HVAC gets you fancier padded Unistrut clamps and other goodies.
Plus HVAC suppliers have all the fancy fittings like 180-degree trap return bends and odd threaded adapters ( 5/8" OD Copper to 1/4" and
3/8" NPT M & F threads for trap drain valves and quick-connects) that you won't find at a plumbing house.
Also handy if you want to get 1/8" copper pipe and all the wrot copper fittings to sweat the 1/8" ice-maker line together the right way - anyone can just run soft tubing... ;-P
I would like to know where you read that. It's just plain impossible if you have any amount of pipe at all, and Oak Ridge has a LOT of pipe. You would run out of vertical space to stack piping, hangers would be a major problem, you would spend years making proper fittings into improper fittings, ect, ect. And the additional labor cost for pipefitters would IMO negate any material savings. Anyway, I would be curious as to where you saw that. My grandfather welded miles and miles of pipe at Oak Ridge, as well as the Savanna River Project and other nuclear weapons sites.
Copper is the material of choice if you want clean air. No rust, no flaking galvanize. Rigid copper is inexpensive, and very quick to install, no threading, no unions, just cut, solder, and you're good to go.
I would like to know of anybody actually witnessing a failure in copper air lines from vibration. I doubt it is a problem! I work as a HVAC tech, I have seen copper AC lines vibrating so bad you can barely see them, they are just a blur! This is on equipment that is twenty years old and run hard all summer, many more hours than you would ever put on an air compressor in a hobby shop. I have never seen a fatigue failure. I have seen copper tubing worn through from rubbing against other tubing or equipmet chassis, but no fractures. Still a rubber hose is a good idea, just wondering. Greg
Many years ago I had a '57 Ford 272 ci. V8. These engines had a problem with oil feed to the rocker assembly. The work around was a feed from the pressure sensor port to a hollow stud securing the rocker shaft as well as the rocker cover. In my case the feed across to the other bank was installed as 1/4" copper line. Damned thing was forever breaking, and eventually the hollow stud broke allowing the rocker shaft to break. Finally I cobbled the damn thing together and stuck someone else with it. So yes, copper lines will break from metal fatigue. Gerry :-)} London, Canada
- Hence why I mentioned vibration. I remember threads here about copper brake lines, which when properly installed work great, but when they're just a little loose.....
Tim
-- "That's for the courts to decide." - Homer Simpson Website @
Copper work hardens dramatically, much higher % increase than mild or stainless steels. (starting from a lower base of course) So any application that allows a sympathetic vibration to start will eventually fail. But sympathetic vibration is a function of the mechanical strength of the tube/pipe. Black iron is much stonger.
We have a big air system at work, two 20 hp compressors feeding a rigid copper distribution system. When they added a refrigerator dryer between the compressors and the velocity traps, they plumbed it with copper tubing. Lasted about a month. The copper tubing was replaced by braided steel flex hoses (as used in the original installation), and it has run that way for the last 20 years without a problem.
On 05 Feb 2004 05:55:32 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@aol.com (GTO69RA4) vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!:
Reminds me. I did my elect training with the Govt. If you built a rack for switchgear, you laced everythong and every wire had to lay just so, and be _planned_ at entry time to the loom so that when it came out again it laid just so. All lacing had to be tied ....you get it.
You were paid by the hour, and judged by the result.
I have to say that results were everything and cost was nothing. Planes flew on what we did.
Anyway...One of the guys wired his own workshed. We had electrical technician training, but no license for contractor work. My mate wired up, and had his contractor mate put in the papers (no home wiring around here) and the the inspector came out. He looked around, with my mate crapping himslef at the sidelines.
The inspector finally said "This wasn't wired by an electrician was it?"
(crap crap)
"It's too bloody neat!"
It was passed.
Unfortunately that perfectionism has stuck....without the time or the skill to live up to it mostly....:-<
**************************************************** sorry remove ns from my header address to reply via email
Interesting responses about metal fatigue! I am suprised that so many have seen failures with short running times. I wonder what the differances are that have failures in hours vs. equipment that has run for decades with no failure! Greg
The "after cooler" ie the chunk of 1" copper tubing with fins on it that comes out of my big compressor and feeds the tank is copper tubing. It coils around behind the big pulley with the cooling fins as spokes. The unit is at least 30 yrs old or older.
Shrug
Gunner
"To be civilized is to restrain the ability to commit mayhem. To be incapable of committing mayhem is not the mark of the civilized, merely the domesticated." - Trefor Thomas
I think it has to do with length of run and how the tubing is mounted. The old commercial refrigeration systems that I work on often have the lines vibrating a good but. But they're free to vibrate for long runs and seldom give problems. Also most of the lines to the compressors are flex lines especially if they're short (like from the compressor to the condenser).
On the other hand there's a coolant line on my old Moline tractor. It goes from the front of the block to the propane regulator. The original steel line rusted through so I replaced it with copper tubing. I had three breaks at the flare in a relatively short period of run time. This big engine doesn't vibrate anywhere near as much as those refrigeration compressors especially since the regulator is mounted straight to the engine. The fix turned out to simply put a short piece of hose in the middle of the line. Since then I've had no breaks.
There was one type of magneto coil that being reproduced and the thicker primary lead exited the side wall of the coil and made a short loop before being soldered to ground. I personally found three of those coils which had failed with the primary winding open, via a brittle fracture of the solid copper wire where it was out in the open.
All of these fractures were visible only under a good microscope - from the naked eye the lead was 100% continuous. Yet the tiny dark line around the wire circumference was really the edge of a fracture, and upon opening the loop up the surface showed a rough, crystaline surface. Infuriating though because a) it caused intermittent failure, and b) eventually the ohm-meter and the eye disagree - the leads are attached only to a quarter inch long section of bare copper wire, and yet the damn thing says it's open!!
The first one of these I repaired by soldering in another section of solid wire to bridge the gap. It failed after about the same amount of time that the original configuration had lasted. Again by fracture.
So I repaired it again, this time using a section of thick copper braid (actually soder-wick) and it is still working fine after years. All the other coils were fixed the same way, and if reports are to be believed are still working just fine.
I think that the exact mechanical setup and the lengths and vibration frequencies involved are critical to seeing this effect happen.
The original BMW mag coils btw never did show this effect, even though their layout is quite similar - but not exactly the same.
Talking to the retailer about the problem invariably elicits the response: "Oh, we NEVER have any problems with these!" Which of course is absolutely a lie because each of teh gents I repaired the coils for had been in communication with those folks. After describing the exact failure mode, and the best way to fix them, the retailer's tech rep got real quiet and attentive though.
I would never, ever use copper refrigeration tubing for any kind of vehicular fuel or oil line, and am quite certain that any of the restorations with polished copper lines are hanger queens.
Jim
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