Air Compressor Piiping

[gmakra]

I all ways knew never to under estimate the power of a compressed vapor or steam. But one gets complacent and tend to not think about it.

The first picture is after I made repairs, please note the mark on the wall under the piping that is were the original piping hit the wall after it failed.

The piping is 1 1/2 copper that is silver soldered and failed after 15 years the working pressure was 125 PSI.

The second picture is old piping that was cut out. The silver soldering was ok, not great. When this let loose it was quite a startle.

I wanted to replace with black iron pipe but was over ruled so it went back in as copper.

After this I would never pipe in any compressor in anything except iron pipe.

[PhilC]

After looking at the repaired pic, I think the reason for the failure was due to work hardening of the copper. Even though there's a flex hose attached to the compressor, the copper pipe is "unsupported" all the way to the receiver. If it were me, I'd support the outlet just past the flex hose to prevent a repeat in the future. And yes, my home shop is plumbed with silver soldered 1" copper pipe too, but properly supported in the critical areas. ;)

[gmakra]

You are right about it being unsupported but the failure was at the silver solder joint. This is unusual on silver solder joints.

The piping is now supported.

I am still amazed at the violence of the failure it whipped the piping around like a garden hose.

[Len]

That pipe is quite large and there is a lot more pressure on the joints with larger pipe. I try to keep my main feeds around 3/4" pipe then 1/2" at the drops. Unless the runs are real long this is usually plenty of air for most shop operations.