DIY EZ Build PVC Pipe Heater Bender

I like working with PVC pipe but I don’t like using elbo’s and tee’s, they’re just plain ugly in the finished product. I thought, wouldn’t be easier if I could just bend the pipe instead of all the cutting and gluing? I searched online and found that PVC heaters can cost $500 - $1000 or more, so off to YouTube I went. There’s all kinds of ideas out there including, using a heat gun, hot sand, boiling water, but those ideas were just too tedious, especially when using larger pipe sizes. The idea I eventually came up with was so simple that I now use it all the time for all kinds of PVC pipe projects. I’ve come up with several more ideas since I built this first one but more on those later.

The legal stuff:

Use safety precautions when working with PVC. PVC is perfectly safe when used in it’s solid form but it’s best to work with it outdoors when heating for bending as it will give off noxious gases that can be hazardous to your health.  The completed project(s) are to be used at your own risk; I assume no liability for injury or damage arising from the use of these ideas, suggested tool use, or operation of the completed project.

Lets get started:

This project is a great improvement on the standard heat gun. If you don’t have a heat gun in your toolbox, you can get them at your local home store reasonably priced, usually about $20 and up.  Mine is a cheapie 1000-watt unit and works great when used as described below.

First off you need to gather up the following items which can be purchased at your local home store as well:

1:  Three Inch Dryer Duct Tee

2:  Three Inch Dryer Duct Cap

*Note: the cap I have pictured here is a “non-crimped” as that’s all that was available at my home store at the time. Try to find one with a “crimped” end as seen on the left opening in the Tee above. If not available, you can go around the edge of the cap with a pair of needle nose pliers to form it, so it fits inside the bottom opening.

3:  Heat Gun

Now you want to measure the nozzle of your heat gun, so you’ll know what size hole to make in the pipe cap.  For those of you who don’t have access to a hole saw you can trace the outline of the nozzle on the cap and drill several holes, which is what I will do here.  Once you have drilled your holes you can cut out the remainder with wire cutters as shown below then, bend the edges in to smooth it out. 

Put it all together and you’ll end up with the unit pictured below.

Another thing to note is that the sheet metal piping gets pretty hot so BE CAREFULL! One way to mitigate that issue would be to wrap it in fire resistant insulation, which would probably help the process overall by keeping more heat inside the sheet metal.

You also may want to add a couple of extensions at each end to increase the heat area for larger bends.

Now all you need to do is insert your PVC pipe and turn on the heat gun. Again, keep in mind that you need to hold the desired shape until the pipe cools otherwise it will try to return to its original form.