How to Loosen a Plumbing Connection

Any plumbing system out there is basically made out of pipes, plumbing connections (or connectors) and different other elements. Plumbing connections come in various sizes, depending on the size of the pipes that are used. There are three main types of such joints available: straight connections, 90 degrees connections and T connections. They are designed to allow putting together two (or three in the case of T plumbing connectors) pieces of pipes that are usually of the same size. There is also the case in which different sizes are accepted and it allows for pipe size changing to be done with absolute ease.

Most plumbing systems are based on copper pipes and connectors. There are two main types of connections available: compression connections and solder connections. With solder connectors you should know that they are specially sized in order to provide a tight slide fit into the plumbing pipe. The created joint is heated using a torch (usually propane gas blowtorch or in remote cases a hot air gun) and the space that remains between the two pieces is filled with solder. This is done through a capillary action. Loosening such a plumbing connection is almost impossible and unsoldering it usually means that the connector will most likely be left unusable. Your best solution is to unsolder it and then replace it with a new one.

Compression connectors use an olive (a special internal ring) that gets compressed onto the pipe. This happens because the end nut gets tightened onto the actual body of the connector used. The main advantage to using a compression connector stands in the fact that it can easily be loosened and re-used. Even if you have to rearrange the entire system you could end up cutting the pipe with special pipe cutters and removing the connector in order to reassemble the system with it. You will still have to use a new olive though as the old one would be unusable after loosening the plumbing connection. In order to remove the piece you will need a pipe wrench, usually medium-size and adjustable. If you have two it is even better because the proper method is to use one to keep a hold on the pipe and the other one to grab on to the connector and apply force while loosening it through an un-screwing movement. There are cases in which you will need to cut a piece of the pipe to achieve this. It happens when you try to loosen T connectors or 90 degree connectors. You will not have any such problems with straight connectors.

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