Nothing like coming home from a long vacation and finding that water pipe leaking all these time. Well, that’s what happened to us yesterday. Fortunately, the water was leaking from the copper pipe joint due to bad/cold soldering and the leak occurred in the garage only.

I attempted to reflow the solder joint without much success. So I hire the pro to do the job. Learned a few things from this $150 lesson:

1. Can not solder with water in the pipe. Must drain the water first.
2. Reflowing the solder while connected to the pipe and others would not work due to the large heat mass. Must remove the union before reworking the solder joint.
3. Use a MAPP gas torch will work better due to its higher temperature.
4. Do a reasonable amount of prep work like sanding and applying flux before soldering.
5. Shut off the main valve before going on a long vacation.
6. Hire a pro to do that job before doing something drastic or you may end up spending more money. Besides, the pros have better equipment and more experience dealing with the corner case.

I will now be returning some of the stuffs to Home Depot now. Below is an edited video I recorded through out this experience.

A few quick tips I learned from this video: