Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Ducking big pipes (as they were offloaded)

Must you use very fine sand inside the pipe? I used river sand and put it over a low flame.... not a good result.... Kinked.

what size pipe is it?

20mm pipe BK

Cyara - Maybe find something with the radius you want.
Get it near to the heat ....slowly add heat over 250mm
rolling motion between fingers. until the pipe is all floppy
then place it over the radius you have

if its 20mm internal diameter I reckon you should go to an electrical wholesaler and get a conduit bending spring (heavy duty if its pressure pipe that your using)...........will save alot of wasted pipework and heartache.........I wouldnt bother with the sand ...seriously...........btw if your trying to bend something close to a 90 degree angle then bends/elbows would be better again.

Thats it. I'm only using fittings from now on.

Will ask around. Thanks BK

Thanks too C1!

You may not have heated it enough or over a wide enough area or evenly enough. I use a propane space heater with a red-hot element pair about 20cm wide. No sand, but a spring would help avoid some uneven bending on pipe larger than 20mm. Main trick is to heat it evenly until really floppy, as mentioned above. Think toasting a marshmallow...

I didn't heat it over a wide area.... or to the very soft stage you speak of. Got nervous it would start dripping plastic!

No element either........ was an open flame on a gas burner. Maybe that is a problem too...

Thanks HP. I am going to try again.

I want to save on connectors if possible. That is where the cost of using pvc piping really kicks in. Otherwise pretty cheap to use for stuff. You think it possible to bend to 90 degrees? Or maybe weaken it too much?

Gas is ok, but try to even it out, toasting it evenly. Hotspots will make it far harder to do a good job.



Is 90deg possible? Absolutely, easy even. I've done about ten or twenty bends with white pvc and many many with the gray stuff used as electrical conduit (just a diff color). It makes for a far cleaner job when one can bend conduit to fit a job rather than deal with lots of joints. Some interesting bends just can't be done with off-the-shelf bits.

You might try with some small pipe: 12mm?. Cheap and fun to practice with, then toss it out. Much better than wasting a bunch of larger stuff practicing.

All that said, it gets far harder with larger diameters and I've never managed anything larger than 1inch (25mm), but a bending spring may do the trick.

Oh, and I've never seen PVC drip. I think it scorches rather than dripping into your burner.

Neat. Thanks so much HP. Encouraged to try again.