Spent 4 hours on a simple tube repair that should have taken 30 minutes

I had a small leak on a boiler return line near Cincinnati last week. Thought it would be a quick patch and go, but I didn't account for the buildup inside the pipe. There was about 3/8 of scale and crud that I had to chip out before I could even get a decent weld. Then the heat from the torch made some of the surrounding insulation smoke and I had to stop and let it cool twice. By the time I finally got a clean bead on it, the sun was going down and my lunch was cold. What took so long for me was not checking the inside of that pipe first. Has anyone else gotten stuck on what looked like a fast job because of hidden deposits or rust?

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thomas_brown3mo ago

3/8 of scale... man that's brutal. I've been there with a steam line that looked clean from the outside but had about half an inch of rust flakes inside a little 2 inch pipe. I thought I could just hit it with a grinder and be done, but the more I chipped the more came loose. Ended up having to cut a whole new section in because the old pipe was basically swiss cheese under all that gunk. That scale really hides how bad things are until you're already committed.

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