Shark Bite connectors 

Have you been come across issue of water leakage in your home or in basement? If you owned a home for quite a bit of time, you might have faced this situation of water leakage from HWT or a simple pin hole in the copper pipes.

If it’s so, its common practice to visit our nearest hardware store and end up buying a copper pipe soldering kit. Nothing wrong with that.  Its a perfect way to repair this leak.

The soldering  kit consists of a nipple, Gas Canister, a Nozzle,  Solder, Flux,  Pipe Cutter, a piece of Copper Pipe, Sandpaper, Rimming tool and De-burring tool. Sounds like a long list. But it is must if you would like to have a perfect leak proof joint.

It sounds a lot, but all this will cost less than $50 or may be bit more.

Soldering a copper pipe is simple and easy process.  Saying this doesn’t mean, it’s a cakewalk. Yes, there is a little bit of skill required for the joint to be prefect.

Soldering a vertical piece of copper joint need different skill set than the horizontal one.

If the joint ‘s not soldered perfectly, it can Leak. Its always a good idea to practice couple of times before you actually do so.

For those who are not handy or aren’t from the old school and want to make use of new technologies. There is a trend of using shark bite fittings. These are just push and fit kind of arrangement. The whole process doesn’t take more than 10 minutes for a single leak repair.

You have to just mark where the leak is and cut that portion with pipe cutter, measure the length to be taken out, sand off the pipe edges  and insert the shark bite connector in between.
Yes that’s all one need to do.

These new types of connectors have the same life and are easily available in hardware stores. These are less messy and easy to install.

Its always better to talk to a licensed professional if not handy these type of task.