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Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Heat Shrink Sleeves: Most Dangerous Installation Error

  Question:  What is the most dangerous installation error when installing a heat shrinkable sleeve?

  Answer:  I'm going to overlook things like 'failing to clean the pipe' and 'failing to preheat the pipe'.  The most dangerous installation error is an installer who simply fails to care for the bottom of the pipe.

  Pipeline spreads are often NOT pretty.

heat shrink pipeline
A fairly typical (maybe even a 'good' pipeline spread.
 As you can see, there just isn't very much room underneath the pipe.  But still, the bottom half of the pipeline must still be cleaned and preheated.  In addition, the bottom of the sleeve must be shrunk and shrunk appropriately!  This same potential problem exists for any coating of course; working a liquid epoxy to prevent icicles can be even more challenging.

In any case, anytime an inspector asks me "what should I be looking for" one of the first things out of my mouth is that he's almost certainly going to need to get his knees dirty as he'll be crouching down under that pipeline to make sure the sleeve has been properly shrunk on the bottom of the pipe (and he/she needs to be familiar with this page!)
 

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