Stainless steel

[Perturabo]

Hi guys,

I have been looking around for people using stainless in their loop and I have seen bits and pieces but nothing very conclusive. I was just wondering if anyone here had any experience with it or knew of a good reason why I shouldnt have a lot of stainless steel in my loop?

For those who are interested as to what im doing I want to use metal tubing in my current project for the look, I think it will work really well. Stainless would look great and I can get hold of it in 12mm OD, which would allow me to connect it to the components using bitspower multi link fittings rather than horrid looking plumbing fittings if I go for 15mm copper pipe.

 

[dugdiamond]

i do not see why not!

 

[leejc73]

I had considered this for the ultimate tidy loop with some chromed pipework, but i'm utterly shy tea with a pipe bender. Think you should go for it though.............mostly cos i'm too idle/scared of attempting it.

 

[Perturabo]

I have no idea how good I am with a pipe bender, I have bent come copper in the past for my home plumbing but those bends werent too extreme and i didnt care what they looked like. Not sure how well stainless will bend...we shall see, I may just end up with a heap of bent wreckage :s

Glad to hear that the reaction has been positive, I nearly ordered the stuff yesterday and then suddenly started worrying that there could be some terrible reaction that would destroy everything

 

[dugdiamond]

tip for pipe-bending without the proper tools (from a pipefitter):

fill pipes with brine (salted OR sugary water), cap ends with tape and freeze them.

bend pipes over a hard (non-cornered) surface using a cotton towel.

and practice

 

[leejc73]

I've got a 15mm/22mm pipe bender and I'm still shockingly bad with it, and now the house is full of plastic pipe.

Problem solved.

 

[Perturabo]

Thanks for the info dug, I will give that a go. Im guessing the filling is to prevent it from kinking? Will the fact that this is stainless make it really hard to bend? The mild steel sheet I have has been a complete nightmare to bend.

I might be able to find someone to borrow a proper bending tool from, will see what the various tradesmen i know have.

 

[proffesorDub]

if you use the method suggested by dug it shouldn't be impossible to bend it, if your worried then try and make sure the loop has as little bend in it as poss.