"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
wrote:
If I had a copper pipe with a hole in it - say a nail had been driven
through it - is it possible to repair this hole by heating the pipe
with a blow-torch and melting some plumbing solder into the hole?

(This hasn't actually happened btw - I'm just wondering how best to
ever deal with this eventuality!)

Thanks,
Mark.
I tried it once: it wasn't too successful. The solder needs to be fully
liquid to bind, and that meant it tended to run away from the hole by
capillary action.

However a split piece of pipe, flattened slightly and cleaned should make
a good enough patch, but the standard thing is to cut the pipe and use a
slip coupling.

Ultimately thats what I did.


I once had a problem where the wife drilled a wall (!) and nicked a water
pipe that was buried in there, It was totally impractical to dig it out
enough to do a 'proper' repair, so I took some stout copper wire culled from
some 2.5mm t&e and wrapped it around the pipe and twisted the ends together,
having first cleaned the pipe to a shine around the damage. I then slid the
two loops together, and bent the wire out to form a 'circle' around the
damage. With some flux on there, and a large electric soldering iron, I was
then able to fill the copper wire circle with solder, which bonded well to
both the pipe and wire. Left exposed for a while, I was able to confirm that
the leak had indeed been fixed reliably, so eventually, I reinstated the
plaster. I lived in the house for some years after that, and no problem with
the repair ever appeared, so as they say, the job was a good 'un.

Arfa