The Plumber Badge

The reality of the pandemic is you are on your own with many things. I experienced this last week when my hot water boiler died. Electric boilers die of age, usually because there is a limescale buildup on the heating element, increasing the thermal insulation. As a result the heating element reaches higher temperatures and finally it burns out. And as I know there is no practical way of descaling a water heater. I ordered a new one online (this part was easy) just to find there was no one willing to come down and install it. The new one has a bit different dimensions and hookup, so the water pipes had to be adjusted to match.

So I decided to give it a try myself. After all there was nothing to lose. I started with watching a series of YouTube videos on plumbing using copper pipes. It all looked promising. Then I ordered (online) a starter kit - a butane torch, a pipe cutting tool, soldering wire and metal brushes. The whole set for about $20.

I was amazed, after soldering the first joint, how easy it was. Clean the pipes with brushes to remove the copper oxide, cover one part with soldering paste, heat the joint, touch it with solder, done. Of course nothing was certain until I assembled the whole set and pressurized it after connecting, but everything worked like a charm. Zero leaks - wow!

I could compare that the the "old" way of plumbing using iron pipes and oakum - based sealing on screw joints. That was always leaking. The copper soldered joints seem to never leak.

And here we've arrived to the smart design of this system. It is much smarter than it seems on the surface. It all works on the principle of capillarity. The distance between the walls of two elements to be soldered is such that - due to capillarity - it sucks and evenly distributes the solder around the pipe. And it sucks in just the right amount of solder - until the junction is full and evenly covered.

There are many very smart systems we use everyday. Systems designed on some smart principles, designed in a way you simply cannot go wrong with them. Such systems win the markets, because they are extremely simple to use and extremely reliable making anyone using them a champion.

Some will say now I am again talking about Bluetooth mesh and how we have designed it to be extremely simple to use and extremely reliable, by eliminating the cumbersome "oakum sealed iron joints". Yes, with Bluetooth mesh now almost anyone can be a lighting controls champion. There's simply no way to go wrong with this system.