Ed Stoffel

The water at our house has too much calcium so I just bought a water softener that is on sale at Sears. I had some help on my last plumbing project - moving the laundry room to the main living level of the house. Having watched that person sweat copper pipes, I thought I'd try doing so for this project. I bought everything I'd need including a propane torch, plumbing solder & flux, and all the pipe, adapters and valves. I designed a 3-way valve so that I could easily engage or bypass the water softener. At each connection point, I sanded the outside points, and steel-brushed the inside points, and dry-fitted things for sizing. Then, I fluxed and soldered together what I could before cutting into the main water supply. I turned off the water, and cut the main supply where I planned to attach all of this, and noticed that although the water was off, it was still sitting in the pipe below my cut. How was I going to get that out of the pipe, I wondered? I tried using flexible tubing to syphon out the excess water and then finishing the job. But from that point forward, the solder just wouldn't take. What was the problem?

I called a plumber for help finishing the job, and learned what I'd done wrong. Since we're on a well, he had me turn the well-pump power off, drained the holding tank, and then opened the shutoff valve. He explained that any water or steam in the pipes prevents proper soldering - the water cools the heat necessary to solder, and steam pressure blows out the solder. Watching his technique, he soldered much faster that I had, heating the fixtures (not the pipes), and touching the solder to the opposite side of the torch, allowing it to run quickly into the seams. Then, he painted the job with a little more flux, wiping it clean with a rag. It all works well now, and I got a $200 plumbing lesson... for about the same cost of a 2-hour flight lesson.

ASCAP, BMI and the RIAA make sure broadcasters pay royalties to songwriters, composers and publishers. They also know what to charge businesses that play music for their customers. But what should they do about podcasting? Podcasts can be downloaded, copied, distributed and played an unlimited number of times without the podcaster's ability to count all of this. So instead of figuring out a good fee schedule, the organizations have done nothing to allow podcasters to use music under their control. So what are podcasters who want to include legal music to do? An entire industry of private music is emerging. It's free for podcasters to use, and great publicity for musicians to get known. One source of legal music for podcasters is the Podsafe Music Network:

What is Podsafe music? Podsafe music is described as a work that meets all of the following conditions: Works submitted to the Podsafe Music Network are the property of the artist, and all rights to these works, including lyrics and music, are the property of the artist; AND All works contain no recordings, lyrics, copyrights, or other elements that are the copyright of any other artist, except under the limited provisions of the Creative Commons License Agreement; AND Despite any recording contracts with RIAA, ASCAP, or BMI, or other recording industry entity, the artist retains ownership of the works, and is free to distribute, broadcast, license or sell these works at the artist's discretion. Only registered podcast producers can download music.

The site allows musicians to submit music, podcasters to download music for use in podcasts, and all others to listen and buy music from the site.