So if I look a little disheveled it’s because my wife called me—I’m at the grocery store;
it’s Sunday night—she told me that there is a leak in our kitchen ceiling. There’s
water coming out of the recess light. So I’m going to go home, I’m going to drive home,
and I’m going to show you how to fix this. Most likely it’s a pinhole leak, so I’m
going to show you how to fix a pinhole leak in a copper pipe. And it’s easier when you
have the supplies already at your house. So I’m going to share with you the supplies
that I have on-hand—it’s kind of like an emergency plumbing kit—and I think you
should have it. So I’m going to drive home, set things up, and show you how to fix a leaking
copper pipe. Let’s get to it. All right, as you can see here I put a little
hole in the ceiling so I can see exactly where the water was coming out. Now you also want
to check to see where it’s mushy before you drill that hole. And then you can saw
with a drywall saw, like I’m doing here, a tiny little square or rectangle up in the
ceiling and look for exactly where the leak is coming from. So that’s what I did. I
thought that I spotted it. And then I cut out a bigger hole to be able to access that
pipe and work on it. So that’s kind of the general way in which you want to spot the
location of the leak. Now in my case, the copper pipe was leaking
right where it was going through the joist. No fun, but I’ve done this several times
before. It’s an easy fix. After you spot the leak, you want to turn the water off to
the house and then flush the system at the lowest point. In this case, it was the laundry
tub. So I’m going to flush the hot and cold lines.
Now I’m going to be using SharkBite fittings. This is a ½” x ½” coupling. And it’s
going to be helping me to splice the copper pipe with a piece of PEX. So here’s a ½”
PEX. I just need to make sure that the end of it is square.
Now I like using an autocut tool to cut the copper pipe. As you can see here, I’m just
twisting it in the direction of the arrow that’s on the autocut tool. Then what I’m
going to do is, once I get a nice cut and I slice the copper in half, I’m going to
drain the rest of the lines into that plastic bowl.
Now this is a SharkBite removal tool. Because I already have some SharkBite fittings up
in the ceiling, I’m going to slide this onto the pipe and push it against the SharkBite
fitting and then pull the pipe out of the SharkBite itself. So that’s why I’m using
that tool. And you can do the exact same thing. Now to the left of my stubby thumb here, you’re
going to see a black dot. That is the source of the pinhole leak. We’ve been having a
lot of these in our house—probably 5 or 6. And if I were to replace the copper pipe,
I’d use Type L because it’s a little bit thicker wall than the type of copper pipe
that I have up in the ceiling—just a bit thicker.
So if you’re going to be doing that, this is a deburring tool on my RIDGID No. 15 pipe
cutter. You want to deburr your copper pipe like so because when you cut it, it’s going
to have a little depression in it, and you might have some copper shavings on the surface
or inside of the copper pipe. You just want to smooth it out using emery cloth. So deburr
it, and then smooth it out using emery cloth. Now this little orange tool is a SharkBite
tool. You slide it on to the end of your copper pipe or your PEX pipe, and you make a mark
1” in from the end. You can also use a measuring tape. But I had the tool, and I used it. Then
you slide on your SharkBite fitting up to that mark that you made on it. And that’s
how you know that the SharkBite is on the entire way.
Now to cut and make square the PEX pipe, I’m using this Milwaukee pipe cutting tool—worked
like a dream. And it squares off the edge of the PEX piping. Now I just made a mark
1” in from the edge again using my SharkBite tool. Now I know how far in the SharkBite
needs to go. So in this case, this is the pipe up in the
ceiling. I’m going to make a mark on it with a SharkBite tool. As you can see I made
the mark there. Then I’m going to deburr it and clean it just like I did with the copper
pipe a few moments ago. So you always want to deburr it. You can also use a utility knife
to do this. You don’t have to buy a special pipe cutting tool. But you do want to use
emery cloth to clean off the edge as well. So after doing that, I slid on my SharkBite
fitting. It’s on there by 1”. It’s up against the mark that I made with my marker.
Then I’m going to measure the distance between the two SharkBite fittings and then add 2”
onto that dimension because the SharkBite fittings, what they do is you slide the pipe
on 1”, right? Like what we’ve been talking about. So get your measurement at 2” onto
it. I slid my PEX through the joist hole, pushed it into the SharkBite the entire way
so that the mark is flush with the SharkBite fitting itself on both ends. It’s really
as simple as that when you use SharkBite fittings. So as you can see here, I just use my flashlight
to make sure that my fittings were all nice and tight and good to go. Oh and by the way,
your pipe will spin. There’s nothing wrong with that.
So after performing the repair, I slowly turned on the water to the house to pressurize it.
Just pressurize it enough. You’ll notice I’m not turning it on the whole way. Then
I went back upstairs to check for any leaks on all the different points of the SharkBite
fittings, between the SharkBite fitting and the PEX and copper pipe. No leaks. So in that
case, what I did was this: I went back downstairs, and I turned the water on the entire way.
And I just left that on the whole way and checked for leaks throughout the evening.
But as you can see here, I created a little bit of a mess. My poor wife, she was prepping
dinner while I was fixing this copper pipe. So that’s how you fix a leaking copper pipe,
specifically a pinhole leak in the copper pipe. I have one more bit of advice for you
and a surprise, so hold tight. If you have slack in your copper pipe, you can use a slip
end fitting to fix that. So slip end fittings slide onto the copper pipe, and they slide
back and forth. You replace your section of pipe either with copper, PVC, or PEX. You
put your other SharkBite fitting on, and then you slide this back onto your replacement
piece of pipe. So I just wanted to make sure you knew that slip end fittings exist.
Now here’s the surprise: I was thinking, wouldn’t it be cool if there were an emergency
kit that you could have in case you have a leaking copper pipe in your house? So what
I’m going to do for you is put together two emergency kits. They’re going to have
two SharkBite couplings in it, two pieces of PEX tubing—tiny pieces that you can use
to replace your copper pipe—and one or the other of one of these tools: either a Milwaukee
PEX cutter, like this one here, or an autocut tool, like this one, that cuts through copper
pipe. So one or the other I’m going to give away within each of the kits, all right? So
the kit is going to have two SharkBite fittings/couplings in it, two pieces of PEX, and either the Milwaukee
tool or the autocut tool in the kit. So how do you enter into the giveaway? Well
in the comments either on YouTube or back on over at HomeRepairTutor.com, tell me why
you want the kit and how it could help you out. It’s really that simple. And then I’ll
randomly choose two lucky people, one on Home Repair Tutor and one on YouTube. And that’s
pretty much it. All right, so thanks for watching today’s
video. I really appreciate you taking the time to do that. It’s an honor that you
watch my video. I come out with a new one every single Tuesday, so make sure you hit
the subscribe button over here on YouTube. And visit Home Repair Tutor as well because
we got a ton of great tutorials waiting for you over there.
Again, thanks for watching, take care, and I’ll see you in the comments.
Here’s Tybo, my neighbor’s cat. He’s so cute and adorable. He’s enjoying the
warm weather here in Pittsburgh, too. It’s so nice today. Hope you’re enjoying it,
Tybo.