I have to fill a crack on my sprinkler backflow. It is a Febco 765 and is made of bronze. I’ve seen people on youtube filling similar cracks with lead / rosin-flux core solder but I’m wary that the lead may contaminate the water, may not hold up to the pressure and may expand/contract at a different rate than the bronze leading to failure. Is there a problem with lead solder on the crack and should I use silver? BTW: matching color is unimportant.
All current plumber’s solders are lead-free (Tin-silver, or Tin-Antimony or something else) these days.
You should be able to use that to fix the crack, but you need a decent torch, and a lot of flux.
Wait - this is for the sprinkler system - so lead is not an issue. Especially the small amount of lead that can dissolve from the solder over long periods of time.
If you have a MAPP gas or acetylene torch you could use a bronze brazing rod for filling the crack.
Are we raising a generation with no idea of scale?
We have one person who wants to boycott all CA produce because 45,000 acres of trees are being watered from fracking operations and is convinced all the produce from 8,000,000 acres is poisonous.
The possibility of lead in paint or asbestos on the furnace is scaring house hunters.
And now we worry about .00001 oz of lead on a bronze SPRINKLER?
This almost tops the concern about the contamination from battery acid on a motorized wheelchair falling in a SWIMMING POOL. 6 fluid oz of acid in a minimum of 8000 gallons of water. My average residential pool is 15,000 gallons.
No shit. All my plumbing is copper pipes with lead solder joints. I am in no way worried about whatever extremely and insignificant amounts of lead may possibly leach into the water. It’s so insignificant that I’ve never even considered it.
That’s fine for you, but if you ever have children living there, I really hope you’d consider it long enough to get a lead test done on the water.
It really takes remarkably small amounts of lead to f*ck up a growing baby’s brain permanently.
This picture looks like the valve connections are already bored to accept soldered pipe so you should be fine. My only concern would be if you have cracked a female inlet where an NPT pipe screws in - solder will not be strong enough to close the crack - it will split again.
This is an unfair characterization of what that poster said. He wanted to avoid Californian produce to punish them economically ( if enough people did the same ) for doing these things, not that he was concerned for his own health.
And weirdly, this is recommended by all sides, left or right: ‘Boycott to punish wrong-doers with your wallet’.
( Except California [ and the USA itself ] is too large to be affected by boycotts, of course; and to avoid boycotts, some capitalists insist that product information must be concealed from the purchaser, as with GMOs, to ensure full compliance. )
Yeah, and how much of that is pee?