Installation of PVC Joint

JOHN MCCOY: Hey, everybody. This is John McCoy, Production Manager G&D Chillers. We’re going to run you through the proper way to secure a schedule 80 PVC joint, using our pre-insulated PVC here. I’m going to hand you guys off to Seth McEldowney.

He is the Project Manager and Install Superintendent here at G&D Chillers.

SETH MCELDOWNEY: So here we have a piece of 2-inch pre-insulated PVC pipe, polyurethane foam, schedule 40 PVC shell. And so now, we’re going to basically demonstrate how to prep the pipe and the fitting for a proper joining process. So first off, obviously get your cut length on whatever your pipe size is.

And typically, out in the field, to get a square cut, we’ll use a band saw. You can use a chop saw. This pipe has already been shelled back. For a two-inch pipe, the socket depth on a two-inch fitting is inch-and-a-half. You basically want to shell back the pipe, give yourself like a half an inch. So, shell back the pipe two inches. That way you’re not skinning back too much insulation and you don’t have to go back and re-insulate. You’re going to end up with basically a piece of pipe that’s still relatively dirty. So, there’s a couple options.

Typically, we use a painter’s tool to clean the pipe. So, if John can hold this for me, you can basically just use this and go around, and get a majority of the bulky glue and foam. Second, if the pipe is still relatively not clean, you can take a piece of emery cloth, and–

Okay, so now that the pipe is clean, and I do want to emphasize not to overuse the emery cloth, or say, use a wire brush on a drill or even with even by hand, you don’t want to degrade the integrity of the pipe. It’ll be detrimental when you go to start up the system.

So next, the other important thing is you want to deburr the pipe inside and out. You can either use a deburring tool, such as this, or a reamer, such as this, used on copper and steel pipes and everything.

So, I’ll just start off with the reamer. You just kind of want to go in, swirl the reamer around.

You basically just want to remove the burrs. And it is good, especially on the inside, to maybe deburr quite a bit. That’ll help out with flow rates and everything once the piping system is installed and up and going. So, for the outside, you can either use the reamer, or easier is to use the deburring tool. You can get it at a local plumbing shop.

Basically, stick it over the end, and just twist and it will get rid of the burrs. Basically, when you go to fit the pipe with glue, you don’t want to burr on the end. When you push in the glue, whatever burr you have will push the glue in towards the socket, and you won’t get a very good seal on your joint.

So, the next step is to primer. When primering, on the pipe, if there’s still some residue, you can go pretty heavy with the primer just to kind of through that residue, that glue residue on, like such. Then the socket, basically the same thing.

Now you want to let these set and dry, and let the primer evaporate, maybe give it a couple of minutes.

Then at that point, once the primering is done, you can go and glue your joint onto your pipe.

Depending on the glue you’re using, we typically use the heavy-duty grade glue. Based on the pipe sizing and just pressures you’re using, they recommend, I think, for two-inch, it’s like a two-hour cure process, up to four-inch pipe, it’s like four to six. Typically, on stuff bigger than four-inch, we’ll at least go 24 hours.

So as far as gluing, I typically start off with a socket. Now, when you glue, you want to put a thin layer of glue on the inside of the fitting.

On the pipe itself, you can put a liberal amount of glue on the pipe. And then, basically push, and do like a half-turn twist with the fitting. And as you can notice, there’s excess glue dripping out of the joint, and that’s basically what you want.

You don’t want to have a heavy puddle of glue inside the socket that can weaken the joint. But you basically want all the excess to run outside the fitting.

And you just sit here and hold for 30 seconds to a minute. Vapor pressure will tend to want to push the joint off the pipe.

JOHN MCCOY: That’s it. That’s how the proper installation of a PVC joint, and our schedule 80 PVC is done.

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