Advice on repairing a plumbing crack on a 1995 Calspa

[Brent]

Hi, I'm a first-time hot tub owner, as a result of my wife and I buying our first home. The hot tub is a Calspa PS5, manufactured in 1995. It was working when the previous-previous owners moved away in 2010, but the people we bought the house from didn't use it at all, so it's been sitting empty for 3 years. It's been covered the entire time, and is in a cedar enclosure, so it's been mostly out of the elements.

Currently, I'm wondering how to fix this problem:


(thumbnails... click for full-size)

It's on the input to the filter canister, so if I'm not mistaken, it won't be under pressure. It looks to me like the elbow was installed at the wrong angle,  or the filter canister got rotated, and it over-stressed the flex pipe. Would something like this fix it, or would that not work because of the bend?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

-Brent

[Chas]

I would continue the crack around the blue pip with a sharp knife - cut it clear with about a 1/4" sticking out.

Then move the rest of the blue pipe out of the way.

Get a good-quality heat gun (you can use a propane torch but you really have to be extra careful) to heat up the stub of blue pipe glued into the fitting. Once you get it hot enough, you can gently peel it free. I have used a screwdriver to separate the pipe from the fitting - be very careful not to crack the fitting. Once you get a section of it away from the fitting, you can begin to fold it over itself, and roll it out like the lid of a sardine can.

All of this should leave you with a fitting ready to re-use. I generally glue in a stub of regular pipe instead of flex - it just gives you a better chance of getting a perfect glue joint. Then put a coupler on that stub, and glue the blue into that coupler. Of course, to get the old blue pipe to flex the way you will need it, you will have to use the heat gun to soften it up. Go slow, get it hot evenly, and it will flex like new.

Also - when you go to glue the flex into the new coupler, be sure to use purple primer on both the flex and the coupler. And I like "Christy's Red Hot Blue Glue," put it on both the flex and the coupler while the primer is still a bit wet.

HTH

 

[Brent]

Thanks, Chas. By the time your reply came in, I had already cut the pipe away and started digging the old pipe out of the fitting -- with very minimal success. Thanks to your advice, the use of a friend's heat gun finished off the job in about 10 minutes! Huge difference. Now just need to smooth out the inside of the fitting a bit, and wait for the parts to come in.