Couple weeks ago we had a 4.5 earthquake in Socal, center 10 miles from my house. It felt very strong but nothing fell down. A week late I noted our cats didn't want to use the cat door which is right under the water tank. I opened the empty cabinet which was converted to cat door and found water soaking wood floor and surrounding. Traced the leak to the cold nipple entering the tank top. The 4" long 3/4" NPT galvanized nipple (not dielectric) was wrapped with insulation which held moisture from a slow leaking union -- I think -- above it, and with passing time this caused half of the pipe OD rusted through. I removed the union and inserted a right size socket into the nipple to support it during removing with pipe wrench. I used penetrate oil and binging it with small hammer 12 hours before trying. It didn't work and the weak nipple twisted. What's next? I was thinking about buying a new 30 gallons tank, but the thought of hauling the old and the new tanks made me tired. There must be a way to remove the broken nipple and keep the old tank.
I hacksawed the nipple with 1/2" protruding from tank, and hacksawed the pipe vertically to split it open length wise. It's a very slow process bc i only had less than 1/2" stroke: the saw blade stopped by the Polysulfone deep tube under the nipple, and I also didn't want to cut deep into the tank female threads. I was thinking if one cut line was enough to fold the pipe inward. The cut was about 1.2mm wide and I wasn't sure it's enough gap to fold the pipe in, and I didn't want to mess it half way. I ended up cutting two vertical line about 10mm apart. When the cut was deep enough I used a pointed dental scaling tool running along the cut to probe for any roughness of exposed threads, to avoid cutting too deep into female threads. When done I hope to use a nose pliers to break off the 10mm pipe strip, then fold the remain pipe inward to remove.
What would you do?
(I will never wrap insulation around galvanized nipples any more.)
I hacksawed the nipple with 1/2" protruding from tank, and hacksawed the pipe vertically to split it open length wise. It's a very slow process bc i only had less than 1/2" stroke: the saw blade stopped by the Polysulfone deep tube under the nipple, and I also didn't want to cut deep into the tank female threads. I was thinking if one cut line was enough to fold the pipe inward. The cut was about 1.2mm wide and I wasn't sure it's enough gap to fold the pipe in, and I didn't want to mess it half way. I ended up cutting two vertical line about 10mm apart. When the cut was deep enough I used a pointed dental scaling tool running along the cut to probe for any roughness of exposed threads, to avoid cutting too deep into female threads. When done I hope to use a nose pliers to break off the 10mm pipe strip, then fold the remain pipe inward to remove.
What would you do?
(I will never wrap insulation around galvanized nipples any more.)
source https://hvac-talk.com/vbb/showthread.php?2222657-Remove-broken-water-heater-tank-nipple-What-s-your-favorite-methods&goto=newpost
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