Here’s a cool trick: if you have a leaky copper pipe, you can use a piece of white bread to repair it. You want to cut off your mains and drain your lines to get rid of any water leaking from the pipe you’re trying to sweat. Sometimes, a shop vac works in getting any extra water out. But sometimes it doesn’t, and you’re stuck with an annoying drip that makes a proper solder nearly impossible because boiling hot water is coming through a seam and it doesn’t let the solder set where it should.
There’s a cheap way to work around this. Yes, you could buy a product that produces similar results, like a wax plug or something else that melts away as you sweat. It might work, but you’ll probably have some wax residue left behind because when you turn the water back on the wax will no longer be liquid.
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Now, if your leak is in a tricky place, you might need to cut part of the wall in order to reach a bad section. Use the pipe cutter to cut out the bad section. As tempted as you’ll be to use power tools, the pipe cutter works best because a power tool in this case will not get you a straight cut and you will need a straight cut to prevent a leak. Most copper pipe cutters cost about ten