A quick fix if you can Laboratory Equipment

[chinacleanroom]

A quick fix if you can Laboratory Equipment fast is to shove a slice of bread into the pipe and poke it up the pipe as far as you can. If the leak is small this should give you anywhere from 30 seconds to 3 minutes to get the job done. If the leak is bad enough that the bread does not hold for thirty second you may have to get someone in to freeze the pipe. If the bread holds the leak for more than 3 minutes then most likely you could have used a hotter torch and kept the steam back while you soldered the copper pipe.

Many boilers are equipped with automatic feeder systems. These will replace normal water loss with no effort on your part. This DOES NOT absolve you from draining your boiler as previously described! A potential problem inherent with automatic feeder systems is that they will always maintain your boiler's water level, regardless of the nature of water loss. Earlier we wrote that excessive fresh water in a boiler is a bad thing. Fresh water contains dissolved air in it.

You can see the bubbles come up when you fill your water glass at the kitchen faucet. The dissolved oxygen and carbon dioxide, when present in excessive amounts, can form mild acids in your system that can rot your cast iron and turn it into the consistency of wet cardboard.

Keep an eye on your system. Periodically, during normal operation, check the radiator air vents for excessive steam loss. Check the radiator shut off valves at the base of the radiators. Visually inspect steam piping and vents in the basement.

If there are consistent leaks of either water or steam, call a professional contractor and have them repaired!

The reason you cannot solder with water in the line is because when water expands to steam there is an increase in volume of about 1700 times. Even if the joint did get hot enough a lot of times this increase in volume causes steam to push the solder out of the joint. Watch your eyes in this case as the solder will Magnesium Oxide Panel and is very hot.