One evening last spring, I was sweating together some copper water lines in my unfinished house. As my acetylene flame scorched a joist, I realized that I needed to find a heat shield so that I wouldn’t burn down the house. It was late enough that a Home Depot run would have finished me off for the night, so I cast about for a substitute for a commercial heat shield. Lighting onto some scraps of Hardi-Plank siding, I knew I’d found a winner. Composed largely of concrete, I was sure that the Hardi-Plank wouldn’t burn. I jigsawed a slot into a scrap so that I could slide it over the pipe near any framing, and went on sweating.
—Andy Engel, Roxbury, CT
Edited and illustrated by Charles Miller
From Fine Homebuilding #130
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Please be aware that as a poor conductor, if there is any moisture in the sheet it may explode. It was standard practice for us as children to throw some into bonfires. Most of us survived :-)
Bob Guthrie
Sydney Australia
A piece of rockwool insulation also works well, and it's flexible