Pro Handyman Blog

Repairing a crack in your plumbing is not a difficult thing, but getting access to it might be. Copper piping is tough. Usually, when you get a crack in a length of it, mother nature has had something to do with it, such as freezing pipes.

To repair a crack in a copper pipe, you will need to cut out the damaged area. You may not need to cut it completely out if the pipe is still perfectly round, but this is seldom the case. When water freezes, it will expand against the pipe walls and the pipe will not be round where the break occurred. So you will likely have to cut out the damaged section, which will amount to a few inches.

You will be left with a gap in the piping. You can repair this gap using a repair coupling. The repair coupling comes in different lengths to accommodate different sized areas of damage. You will need to clean and flux each mating surface before you apply the torch to heat it up. Here is an article on how to solder copper pipes.

You will clean the outside of the copper pipe’s ends that you previously cut, as well as the inside ends of the repair coupling. Use emory cloth for the outside of the pipe and a wire brush for the inside. You want the cleaned surfaces to shine line a new penny. Then you can flux and solder the repair.