My good friend and distant-relative Ken dropped by the house yesterday and helped me out with welding up the U-Turns to pipe that would go down the holes as they are drilled. I had worked out a procedure to weld by myself but it was much easier and more fun to have someone there to help.
Then, per HJB's suggestion, I pressure tested all of the welds, and I'm glad I did.
Here is the pressure tester I made up for the job:
Left side shows the tester. Something to note is that I brazed the tire-fill stem on. It's important to remember to remove the valve core BEFORE you braze, and only reinstall it after everything cools down.
Right side shows distant-relative Ken holding the pressure tester attached to the loop to be tested. Please note that the force of the barb is not enough to withstand pressurized air. We found out the hard way. Ken was worried that he might have a swollen nose from the incident, but everything held up fine once we tightened hose clamps on the pipe over the barbs.
Then we pressurized the system.
I give more credence to the orbit gauge.
Then Ken put the U-Turn into the water to look for leaks. As can be seen from the right-side pic, this one tested good.
But not all of them tested good as can be seen from this photo:
And here's another leaker:
There was nothing subtle about the leakers, they were very easy to spot with the air-pressure/water test.
So I had two failures out of 18 units tested. Each unit had 5 welds per unit so that was 2 failures per 90 welds, or 1 failure in 45 welds.
Since it only takes
ONE FAILURE to kill the whole system, testing all welds is mandatory.
So I need to repair and re-test to two bad loops, then start planting plastic in earnest.
Best Regards,
-AC_Hacker