Split copper pipe

[Lifeblood]

A copper pipe split in our garage over the winter. The pipe leads directly to an outside faucet, and the water only appears to leak when I turn on the faucet. Can I fix this myself? Suggestions for how to proceed? Note that I have yet to locate the water supply shut-off valve in the house (there is one in a concrete box by the road, but I hesitate to touch that since it controls all the water to the house).

[zataks]

It's hard to tell exactly where the split is on the pipe and how severe it is from the picture but you have a couple options.

First and foremost: make yourself intimately familiar with your water shutoffs.   Both of them.  How to turn them on and off and what tools you need to do it.  (Most often a slotted valve key for in ground shutoffs, if you can reach it by hand, a pair of channel locks should work--typically.)   The concrete box by the road is likely your meter and curb stop.  This is a viable shut off but the water Co. doesn't typically like you monkeying with it.  The house shutoff should be between that box and the house, nearer the house.  Probably about 30" under ground and identifiable as a piece of 3"-4" plastic pipe sticking up a couple inches out of the ground.

Also hard to say how much pipe you have between the wall and the joint.  If the split is in that length of larger pipe, you might be able to band/clamp it and stop the leak.  This would be a temporary thing as you need to make sure you insulate that spigot this coming winter.

Is that spigot/pipe threaded on?  If so, screw it off and take it to your local hardware store and figure out a means of fabricating a replacement. But more likely, that reducer and connection is sweated on (ugh I hate copper pipe and solder!) and will require heat or a saw to remove depending on whether or not you want to salvage anything.  Sweat it off, get a new spigot and associated plumbing, and sweat that b**** back on there! 


Or peel back more of that insulation until you get to a nice, unadulterated section of pipe and hack it off there.  Grab connections to go from copper to plastic and replumb in plastic tubing to a new spigot. 

And make sure to cover up/insulate in the winter!

[Hamster]

I think this PDF will answer most of your questions.
Broken 'frost proof' faucet. Should be able to screw on/off with the threads once the water supply is shut off.

[Greg]

Can you sweat copper plumbing?  Want to learn?  Then you can fix it yourself.

Your spigot is one that could have been threaded into a brass elbow, but instead was sweated on.  So you'll have to un-sweat it to replace the entire spigot. The sweat joint is just to the left of the threads in your pic.  If it were me I'd shut off the water, remove the old one, take it with me to a store to find the right replacement, and any supplies and tools you need, and then come back and install the new one.

The reason it split and leaks is the faucet was on or at least the hose was full and attached when it got cold.  If the hose had been removed and the spigot had been turned off, the anti-siphon part (the tan can on top of the faucet on the outside) would have allowed water to drain out of the spigot part that extends into the wall, which is why this is called a frost-free spigot. But the key to making that work is the removal of the hose.

So, you'll have to make it a habit to remove the hose next winter.

[Lifeblood]

This is great info - thank you all. I am not sure I can do the sweating, but I will research it and see.

Re water supply, I finally found a large, blue faucet in the garage today. I am assuming this is the main water cut-off in the house. Does that sound right?

Next winter, the hose can stay inside where its warm - lesson learned.

[PMG]

Yes, you can fix this.

Youtube holds the answers.

Verify the cut offs around the house!  You want to know this yesterday in case of an emergency. 

Yes, a hose should be detached and put away over the winter.  They make foam insulated covers from outdoor spigots if it is still at risk of freezing.

Good advice from the previous posters.  Check into sharkbites.  They make an easy transition from copper to clvc, etc.  No sweating involved, just slip it on.    You could in theory replace just a section of the copper pipe, or transition to cpvc from above the split and on to the spigot.  Without seeing things in person I can't really tell you how to proceed.  I can sweat copper, but I am not very experienced at it, and with so many fittings so close together it can be a trick to get them all sealed, as heat from one travels to the next.  Hence, sharkbites.  Cpvc breaks easier that copper, but it is very simple to work with. 

A decent copper pipe cutter will cost you around $20.  Sharkbites run around $10 a piece.  Quite a bit more than regular fittings, but a lot less than a plumber. 

I recommend shopping a local small time hardware.  They will help you figure out what you need.

[zataks]

Test all of the things you think may be water shut offs.  There is absolutely zero harm in shutting water off to the house.  Just because you may think that a valve could be the house shutoff, it may be a specific zone, irrigation, or weird bastardization that a previous resident installed.

tl;dr test the shut offs immediately.

[Emg03063]

Sweating copper pipe is an easy DIY skill to learn if you decide to go that route.  Here's a simple video:

http://youtu.be/f3TTfPPVg5k

I repaired a burst copper pipe in my garage wall years ago.

2 tips:  1.  Use a fiberglass flame shield to avoid burning the wood behind the pipe with the torch.
2.  Use a wad of soft white bread or glycerine ball to absorb residual moisture upstream of the joint in the pipe while soldering.  Either will dissolve and flush out when the water is back on (so I'm told--I neglected this step and wound up with a few pinholes in my joint which I was fortunately able to melt out--a result of steam pressure in the pipe from residual moisture while soldering).

[George_PA]

It sounds like you are not too familiar with plumping, the easiest way might be:

1.) Shut off the water to the area
2.) cut off the suspected frozen section of copper pipe
3.) attach an adapter to go from copper to PEX
4.) From that point on just use PEX, its 10x easier that dealing with soldering in tight spot with little experience, which is about as fun as repeatedly smashing your head into a wall
(if you see all those burn marks on the wall, that is the cramped area you will putting a flame into using copper)

5.) Run PEX all the way to the faucet outside, ask the people at your hardware store for which tools and parts you need

Also PEX is slightly more resistant to freezing as well so this will also help avoid future freezes.  Also they make these little Styrofoam cups that attach your outside faucet and cover it to also help prevent freezing, put one on next winter.

Note also someone above also mentioned CPVC which technically could also do the job (for most codes CPVC is the only type of PVC piping that can handle the high pressure of supply line plumping). 

My personally preference is for PEX because they make faucets that will hook right up to it and plus it is little easier and faster to connect the pipe sections together. 

I have worked with both copper and PEX definitely agree with MMM about this:
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/11/23/how-to-become-a-kickass-plumber-with-pex/

[zolotiyeruki]

We have spigots like that in our house.  I think here's what happened:  the frost-proof spigot avoids damage by putting the actual water seal far inside the house, with the handwheel outside.  So when you close it, there's no water anywhere within 6" of the outside.  It looks like the cold penetrated farther than the valve protects, and froze the water that was way inside the valve.

It looks like the split is downstream of the joint, so this should be a pretty straightforward process of sweating off the split fitting and sweating on a new one.

[Lifeblood]

Pipe fixed! I tried my best to apply all the good advice received here, but I think this was one of those things where I had to make some mistakes in order to understand the collective wisdom. Here is a brief summary of my learning experience.

First of all, I realize that I could have avoided this leak very easily be removing the hoses when I heard that winter was coming. At least this experience forced me to locate the main water turn-off in the garage, which I plan to label ASAP. I also found the turn-off by the street, but understand that it is illegal for civilians like myself to mess with it, at least in our town.

A fellow mustachian who may or may not go by the name Hamster, offered to lend a hand, as he had some basic soldering experience and tools. We initially considered replacing the copper with PEX, but made a decision to go with copper, I think because it would have been slightly cheaper. We later regretted this decision. We found a replacement siphon faucet, deciding to go with an 8-inch rather than 10- inch length to reduce the need to bend the copper supply pipe coming from the ceiling. While well-intentioned, this made it virtually impossible to solder the joint closest to the external wall, requiring us to solder that part before placing the faucet through the wall. Not a big problem, but not ideal. We set about soldering the joints, and if we had superior soldering skills, everything would have gone swimmingly. Unfortunately, we kept having small leaks, which then required us to turn-off the main water supply, sweat off one or more of the joints in order to get all the water out of the pipe, and then begin again. What should have been an easy job was taking hours, and, pressed for time, we went back to the store and purchased press-fit couplings which worked like a charm. One soldered joint remains, connecting the pipe to the faucet, and if we could start over we would have instead installed one of the joints that screw right onto the faucet. We actually bought that part on the last trip, but since that joint was holding firm, we left it in place.   Photos below.

[George_PA]

yeah, that is part of the problem with soldering, when you first make the joint you have no idea whether it was correct or not until you turn the water back on.  Then, if you do have a leak, you have the heat the whole freakin thing up again and pull it apart the hot joint with wrenches, and then you get the joy of having to scrape and sand for a while and get all the old solder off, and then wait for it to cool down, then repeat the whole process of putting your flux on again, and etc.  Oh yeah, and of course, when you are soldering, and if even just a little water is still in the pipe or finds its way down, it screws the whole thing up and you have to get the bread out (how fun!)

The whole problem with this is not only the huge waste of time and effort but also, since you seem to not a have a local shut-off valve you have no water in your entire during this time, this means, you get one flush per toilet max.  I know that when I work on cold water plumbing if the whole house water has to be shut off, it can stress the wife out a lot, so the smaller the downtime the better.

[Lifeblood]

yeah, that is part of the problem with soldering, when you first make the joint you have no idea whether it was correct or not until you turn the water back.  Then, if you do have a leak, you have the heat the whole freakin thing up again and pull it apart the hot joint with wrenches, and then you get the joy of having to scrap and get all the old solder off, and then repeat the whole process of putting your flux on, and etc.  Oh yeah, and of course, when you are soldering, and even one little drip is still in the pipe, it screws the whole thing up and you have to get the bread out (how fun!)

The whole problem with this is not only the huge waste of time and effort but also, since you seem to not a have a local shut-off valve you have no water in your entire during this time, this means, you get one flush per toilet max.  I know that when I work on cold water plumbing if the whole house water has to be shut off, it can stress the wife out a lot, so the smaller the downtime the better.

Exactly! My wife and kids were home without water for about 4 hours. I was really wishing for a local shut-off valve today!

[Greg]

Congratulations on fixing it.

I've seen where there is a shutoff for the garage spigots just inside the garage where the water enters from the house, to help prevent outdoor faucets in an unheated garage space from having this problem.  Not sure if this would help in your situation but it's something to consider retrofitting.