James: Yes, I did. I had a couple of calls with Gary Klein about my hot water distribution, and that’s one of the things that we discussed. The demand-type recirculation systems work well and use far less energy than continuous recirc systems, even when they’re on a timer. I wanted to try David Wasserman’s method first, though. (See link to my hot water retrofit article above.)

Adam: I think I may have put some of my blood in the pipes here. I was feeling the burr on a freshly cut pipe and put a nice little slice on my finger that bled for a while.

Roy: Thanks!

Mike: Thanks! Saturday ended badly, but Sunday was a different story. I was ecstatic when I opened the valve and everything stayed dry.

Yikes! A disintegrating, lit torch making a fireball under your house? Wow! I asked my experienced plumbing and hot water expert friend Larry Weingarten for his recommendation of a torch and have been very happy with it. It does have the built-in sparker. I also sprang for a flame resistant pad to help me not set the house on fire and had wet rags handy, too. The wet rags also helped (I believe) with keeping nearby joints from melting when I was soldering.

Marty: Yeah, I could have done all Sharkbite fittings, but I wanted to learn how to sweat copper. I watched my grandfather and uncle doing it when I worked summers with them as a teenager, and it’s a skill I wanted.

Your point about inside fittings is an important one. It’s always best to use fittings that don’t reduce the diameter, especially elbows, which also introduce turbulence by turning the water.

Bill: Ouch! That sounds like one of those “No good deed goes unpunished” events.

rj: Thanks for the tips. Yes, clean surfaces are definitely critical.

Pete: I’m using Sharkbite fittings for my PEX runs.

Thomas: Yeah, the importance of clean surfaces is one of the things I learned from my online soldering education. Sunday morning I learned of something that I may have been doing wrong in that regard, too. After you clean the outside of a pipe or the inside of a fitting, you shouldn’t touch it. The oils from your skin don’t get removed by the flux. I can’t find it now, but one of the videos I watched showed how the solder didn’t stick to a place that had been cleaned and then touched before applying flux whereas the one that hadn’t been touched worked fine.

The point-of-use water heater is fine in some applications, and I’m glad it works for you. I’ve got too much invested in my heat pump water heater, however, to not use it in such an important place as the kitchen.