Accessories for polypropylene pipes and tools for their

What tool for polypropylene pipes is needed for the installation of plumbing or heating systems? What fittings and valves are used in different cases? How is the installation itself? Let's try to answer these questions.

Mounting technology

Let's start with a brief description of the installation technology and material features.

It is necessary in order to understand the function of a device.

1. Pipes for water - polypropylene and any others often need to fit the size.. In this case, the ends of the cut-off nozzle should be oriented strictly perpendicular to its longitudinal axis and free from burrs.

Tip: it is advisable to remove the outer chamfer from the end. Thus, we reduce the likelihood of scoring when assembling the connection.

1. Then a pipe cut off in place and a socket fitting for it are melted on a low-temperature soldering iron heated to 240-260 degrees. A nozzle of the appropriate size allows both components to be heated simultaneously.
2. After the surfaces have melted, it remains only to combine them and fix for some time necessary for the plastic to solidify.. The duration of heating, fixing parts and their complete cooling depends on the diameter.

When performing installation works with your own hands, you need to take into account a number of subtleties.

• Polypropylene is a material with a rather high coefficient of thermal expansion. Simply put, on hot water and heating pipes will be noticeably lengthened when heated. To ensure that they do not sag when lengthening, long pipelines are supplied with compensators - annular or U-shaped bends.

• Reinforced polypropylene is preferred for hot water and heating: reinforcement increases the tensile strength of the pipeline and significantly reduces elongation when heated. Chopped glass fiber (fiber) and aluminum foil are used as reinforcement.
• Aluminum reinforcement requires pre-stripping in the field of welding. The instruction is related to the fact that aluminum in contact with water is gradually destroyed due to electrochemical processes that flow between it and other metal elements of the circuit; the destruction of the foil will cause the pipe to split with a catastrophic drop in its strength.

And now let's get acquainted with the tools and components that the installer may need at different stages of work.

Accessories

Fitting device

Fittings for connecting pipes, they are also the fasonine for polypropylene pipes have no competitors in terms of cheapness due to the simplicity of their device. In essence, this is just a figured piece of plastic with one or more sockets. Metal inserts are needed only to mate the pipeline with threads.

Note! Polypropylene valves are ordinary ball valves and chokes, assembled in a one-piece plastic case and installed using the same low-temperature welding. Due to the cheapness of polymers, their price is slightly lower than that of all-metal counterparts.

Some shaped parts for polypropylene pipes are worth mentioning separately.

American

American for polypropylene pipes - a fitting that allows you to make the connection with the plumbing device easily disassembled. It is, as a rule, a coupling or a corner with a brass (sometimes chrome-plated) insert, including a cap nut.

Most often, an American is used in heating systems. It is a functional analogue of the sgon on the liner in front of the radiator or convector: to dismantle the heating devices, it is enough just to unscrew the two cap nuts. The tightness of the connection is provided by a rubber, silicone, paronit or fluoroplastic gasket.

Euroconus

Euro cone for polypropylene pipes is another fitting for making detachable joints between polypropylene and the metal part of the pipeline. Execution options can differ quite strongly among themselves: under the eurocone they understand both a polypropylene product for welding and a metal crimp fitting with a split ring.

A key common feature is the use of a union with a cap nut and a conical shape of the surface that clamps the ring gasket.

Collector

The collector for polypropylene pipes is used in cases when water or coolant is diluted to sanitary or heating appliances not sequentially, but independently. Thus, in the case of water supply, it is possible to avoid a pressure drop on one device when using another. For heating, however, collector (beam) wiring provides independent adjustment of batteries or water floor heating sectors.

The collector can be all-metal, fully polypropylene (for welding) and polymer with brass inserts to connect the valves on the threads. Sometimes valves are embedded in the manifold. To connect pipelines to it, the above-described types of detachable fittings are often used.

An alternative name is a comb for polypropylene pipes.

Compensator

We have already mentioned the simplest compensators: they represent a coil or a bend of a pipeline. However, the simplest solution will not always be unambiguously the best: with a hidden lining such a compensator will be much more problematic to use, and even with an open appearance, the resulting construction will be, let's say, an amateur.

Bellows expansion joints for polypropylene pipes are, quite simply, a section of a corrugated stainless steel pipe. Often the corrugation is protected by a sliding screen, preventing its accidental damage.

The main drawback of the bellows on the background of the U-shaped assembly or ring is an incredibly high cost. For example, with a diameter of 20 mm the bellows compensator will cost 2.5 - 3 thousand rubles, with a diameter of 40 mm - already in 5 - 7 thousand.

Instruments

Soldering iron

It is a heating element with interchangeable nozzles of several diameters. Typical electrical power - from 600 to 2000 watts; the cost varies from 800 rubles for entry-level devices to 20,000 and more for imported equipment oriented to professionals.

Useful options are Teflon coating of a flat heating element, which allows it to be used for butt welding of polyethylene pipelines of small diameter, and the ability to adjust the temperature.

Reference: polyethylene - more fusible compared to polypropylene polymer. He cooks after warming up to 200 - 220 degrees.

Facing device

Facing tool for polypropylene pipes - a tool designed to remove aluminum foil glued between two layers of polypropylene. It is a metal sleeve with one or two end blades, which, when turned, cut the foil to a depth of 2-3 mm. When welding, the cutout is filled with polymer melt; thereby preventing the contact of metal with water.

Shaver

The shaver for polypropylene pipes differs from the end-caper only in that the knives in it are not located at the end of the mandrel, but at the sides. It removes the foil layer outside the pipe. Both facers and shavers are sold both for manual stripping and with the possibility of installing a drill into the cartridge.

Conclusion

We hope that our brief excursion into the basics of polypropylene installation will be useful to the reader. As usual, additional thematic information can be found in the video in this article. Successes!