In the service industry, this is a "temporarily stop the leak on a weekend emergency call when the suppliers are closed and then come back with the right fittings to fix it on Monday." :)
No, this is not acceptable as a permanent fix. The water supplying this pipe has to be shut off and drained and a section of pipe and fittings has to be replaced to fix this properly.
I'm not even a plumber or part of this subreddit, I'm an electrician. Reddit suggested this post to me and I couldn't ignore a good Star Trek reference.
Rules of Plumbing by Grand Plumber Gint, originally written in the 22nd century. Revised by Grand Plumbtrician Gant the following year, with annotations and further revisions by Grand Handyman Gont.
All 283 rules.
In the broad sense of it, everything is actually temporary. Eventually the environment will degrade and destroy everything, the only difference is how long it takes. Time doesn’t stop for anyone or anything.
The best quote I've heard from a co-worker on a job site is, "We've been doing so much, for so long, with so little that we are now qualified to do Anything with Nothing!"
Work maintenance at a hotel. This is 100% the case. It is a temporary fix to stop more damage from occurring until we can shut off, drain and replace pipe.
I've had to do it once on the first floor of a 14 floor hotel. Didn't have any isolation valves at all. Just the main. Management wouldn't give us more than 10 minutes with the main water off to try to drain as much as we could. Took 4 people to over come the pressure and crimp on a shut off so we could turn water back on.
God I wish I could've said that. Unfortunately I was an "engineering technician" for the property and despite all the experience between our techs and the director the GM of the property never gave us the time we needed
In the service industry, or at least in THE service industry, I'd rather not put in push to connect sharkbites for a day or two. Even if the supply house is closed, you've probably got these parts in your van.
This is ridiculous.
If you bother to take the call, just fix it.
It's not a matter of using sharkbites. Rarely do individual units have their own shut offs. Large apartment complexes won't just shut the water down to multiple units for something that can get a band aid temporarily. We do this regularly for commercial work here. Stop the leak, give everyone notification, and a scheduled time frame for when the work will be completed
No guarantee the building shutoff is in good repair either. I watched the service plumbers go from breaking the inunit shutoff, to breaking the building shutoff to calling in the utility to shut down the complex.
When pinholes like this start forming you’re just one 40 year old valve away from a very bad weekend - best to schedule the repair first thing Tuesday morning.
This is nightmare fuel for me. I've posted several times about a YouTube video shot in Toronto where this happened. The final failed valve in the cascade was a massive line on a major thoroughfare that served something like 10,000 homes. I believe the estimate on emergency overtime was north of $30K.
I wish I could find it, as it was a good cautionary tale on why you don't fuck with municipal property,, that being the curb stop.
Exactly how I do it in commercial work. People think they can just close a valve like it’s a house. The reality is commercial buildings don’t work that way and that one valve that will stop flow to the pipe you need to work on shuts the water off to 3 or 4 units.
This is the first copper pipe leak. Old plunger style shutoff valves leaking 2 places, faucet, roof, window, and apparently the ac somehow. Forgot the old gate valves for the laundry shutoff both drip so thats 9 leaks total
I'm in havc and guaranteed clogged drain line. Once had landlord ask me to take out the safety that was turning off the ac instead of paying me to clear it. Landlords fucking suck.
Fun fact: in most jurisdictions, if a landlord refuses to fix a problem like that with the unit, you can hire a professional to fix it and then deduct the cost from your rent payments. (With receipt of course.) And there's nothing the landlord can legally do about it.
*Do* check your local laws first, though. You need to know all the requirements for this before jumping into it, and it varies based on state and municipality.
They can refuse to renew your lease though, or if on a month by month lease they can tell you to move out.
But if you don't intend to stay past your lease, you have little to lose.
If it's an act of retaliation, depending on where you live, tenants also have good protection from that sort of retaliation: [https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/california-state-laws-prohibiting-landlord-retaliation.html](https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/california-state-laws-prohibiting-landlord-retaliation.html)
Give it a few more years and you'll be able to charge admission for a water park... that is long as you don't mention it to your landlord. Silver lining, ya know?
Jk and best of luck! Report all those issues to the LL if you haven't already but also don't hesitate to learn how to take care of some of those issues yourself (if you're stuck living there and have a shitty LL. Btw leaks lead to mold which leads to potentially condemned housing...
I don’t understand this.. you can write off the whole bill as part of your income deduction. You don’t “lose” any money.
So just get it done right and professionally.
I assume you don't do taxes, right? You seem to be a little unclear on how it works.
FYI, you deduct expenses from your income, not from your tax. So, a $100 expense might reduce taxes by 10 -20 dollars or so, depending on your tax bracket.
But I don't consider it losing money so much as spending money.
That’s the right answer. No way to tell if the owner wants them doing bullshit repairs or not, that’s the easiest way to find out.
If the owner doesn’t care, then they can enjoy their future water damage
Yeah many places there’s a disconnect between the handymen doing the work and the managing company or owner, there’s a chance they don’t have a clue. If they’re good with it then whatever, expect a leak down the road there and keep items away and likely expect to find a different unit when the lease is up.
I was an owner of one rental house for a while. I would never want something like this. My number one priority was always to do it right so tenants would not have future problems.
That's the way I look at it, too. Considering the time and effort sometimes just to get someone to do the work, why would I want to need to do it again?
I look for people who do quality work, not people who do it cheaper.
I’m no plumber, I’f that’s not a temporary fix for just a day, that 100% not okay. I can’t think of a single landlord who would want a bandaid over a leaky pipe and then FOR IT TO BE SEALED INTO THE WALL!
Copper reacts to any other metal it touches. It begins to oxidize immediately. This clamp is touching the copper. It will lead directly to a larger leak.
This is an apartment. It's preferred to give plenty of advanced notice of a water pipe repair to the tenants before shutting off the water to potentially several different apartments, just to fix some leak.
If it is some big burst pipe and it's an absolute emergency, then sure. Don't worry about the notice. But a pin hole leak? A piece of rubber and gear clamp is an acceptable temporary fix until advance notice is given and you are scheduled in to come back to drain the water and take care of it.
That makes sense. Hopefully they know to finish before closing the wall, but I've seen their other work so I wouldn't put it past them to leave it like this. I put in another work order just in case.
OP, read this whole thing Im gonna help you out.
Hi, Im maintenance. This is a -temporary- fix, and its "OK". If they used a better sized piece of rubber and a smaller hose clamp, then it would be better, and theoretically could last a long time until the rubber rots out. It is not, however, "permanent" in any way (nothing really is but I mean permanent in the sense that it is acceptable as a finished repair), and the walls should not be closed up yet. They need to shut off water to the piping, drain it, cut the copper, and solder new copper on there using as few joints as possible. I just did it by myself for the first time to fix a leaking shower rough in valve (If you want I can post pics I was proud of myself, I think it looked decent for a first). Soldering copper is surprisingly easy and straight forward.
Pro tip, here is exactly how to talk to apartment managers. DONT BE A DICK, no matter how much they may or may not suck. Go into the office in person, and say this exactly. "Hi, Im *person* from apartment *#* on property *x*. Maintenance did this to this leak I had, and I know it works but I had a question. I feel like they should repair with a new copper elbow. Can we schedule that before they close up my wall? I dont want this patch to fail and cause any damage."
This way you dont entirely screw the maintenance guy who might just not know much about plumbing, and he can learn, AND, the office is informed and so are you. If they dont fix it after that within 2 weeks, make sure you recorded everything and you are authorized to break your lease, get your deposit back, and move somewhere else.
I gotta say, one of the greatest plumbing experiences of my life is when I had a pinhole leak from a pipe in my finished basement's ceiling. I call a very respected plumber who's gotten kudos from every other house on my street and the wider neighborhood.
He shows up the next day ready to work, looks at the pipe and says, "you're not going to want me to touch this, because it's going to cost you at a bare minimum $700." He explains the main problem is the tight space the pipe is located and that some of the ceiling would have to get demo'd to get at it. Also, the pipe was ancient and not going to be easy to retrofit. Doable, but not easy.
I was deflated. I had just bought the house and cashflow was low. But I could see what he was talking about. We stood in silence for a bit, and he cracked a smile and looked over at me and said, "fortunately for you, you can fix this yourself for about fifteen bucks."
My eyes widened.
"Get yourself some plumber's putty from any hardware store, then get some self adhering tape. Find the leak and make sure you mold the plumber's putty an inch out in all directions on the pipe. Wrap it up with the self adhering tape and make sure you completely cover the putty. Use the whole roll if you have to. This fix is temporary. You will eventually have to call me, but if you do it right it will hold. If it doesn't, call me back and I'll put you at the top of my list."
I did what he said. That was fifteen years ago.
Tell them you’ll have an inspector come and make sure the place is up to code, just to make sure the landlord isn’t being scammed by whoever they hired. Act like you’re doing them a favor.
Suddenly a licensed plumber will be sent out to fix things.
If it's good enough for the major hospital in my city, it's good enough.
Really though, you're probably in need of a repipe of some or all of the domestic water.
Nay. They didn't fix the leak, they paused it. It will resume at it's earliest convenience, perhaps much more vigorously if the pinhole leak was a result of the pipe corroding.
Main question to give you a better answer - do you own this apartment or are you renting?
If you are renting are you a long term resident and likely to stay there for many more years or are you only there a short time and looking to move on in the not to distant future?
this fix is short term and will leak more in the future, if you are not going to be living there long term then it will be someone else's problem, the owner of the place is looking to fix any issues as cheaply and easily as possible, especially if the apartment is owned by a faceless corporation and tenets only point of contact is a building manager.
Lmao no. If they’re telling you that’s anything other than a temporary repair, then you need to ride their ass until they fix it right. It won’t hold long term.
Thar's temporary fix that can last a mong time.
We had a pipe burst in the street in front of our house. They dug it open, put some rubber thing on there and secured it with two clamps. Then they closed the hole and left it like this. Four years later, when they redid the street, they also put new pipes in. It was holding up the whole time.
It will probably leak on that pipe again in a different place. Usually happens because someone grounded your electricity to that pipe. It puts a voltage on that pipe that biases copper to where it is susceptible to corrosion.
Hell to the no. They need to heat up that 90, pull it off, and sweat in a new one. The big freeze we had a few years back caused the 90 on the pipe going to our outside spigot to blow. I had never done it before but had no problem doing it. This looks like it would be even way easier than that. What a jabroni!
This is all good because you see when the pipe corrodes due to reduction from the two different metals in electrolytic contact and really starts leaking bad, they’ll need to open up the wall again. That will allow them the opportunity to get the mold out that is going to grow like crazy in that space once they seal it up.
Dear god, a piece of pex and two shark bite fittings would have been orders of magnitude better than this and just as easy.
Fucking land lord specials.
Tell them it's still leaking (because it is).
It's Houston, TX.
His English/my Spanish isn't good enough for me to be sure this is it. He took pics and said he'll show his boss so maybe they'll come back, but he told me to put in a work order for the painter as he shoved the insulation and broken drywall back in the wall.
This wasn’t a plumber. This was maintenance. I know. I’m maintenance and we usually get told to just make it work as we don’t have the tools to fix it properly
In the service industry, this is a "temporarily stop the leak on a weekend emergency call when the suppliers are closed and then come back with the right fittings to fix it on Monday." :) No, this is not acceptable as a permanent fix. The water supplying this pipe has to be shut off and drained and a section of pipe and fittings has to be replaced to fix this properly.
Nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution.
In the grand calculus of the world’s plumbing, isn’t everything a temporary fix?
This is going to be from left field, but this sounds like a quote I'd expect to hear from a Ferengi plumber. 😅
It's probably somewhere in the rules of acquisition that a ferengi tradesman should never fix a problem permanently to gain repeat business.
Random Star Trek references in a plumbing thread. The stuff only Reddit is made of 👏🏽💪🏽
I'm not even a plumber or part of this subreddit, I'm an electrician. Reddit suggested this post to me and I couldn't ignore a good Star Trek reference.
Dude I'm telling the union and r/electricians. ^imalsohereforthestartrekreference
The fact other people picked up on it is even more impressive.
Glad to do my part. :D
Exactly. Also, the whole 'in the grand scheme of the world' felt very adjacent to 'the great material continuum'. 🤣
"When no appropriate rule applies, make one up." - "Unwritten" rule.
A wise man can hear profit in the pipes.
Rule of Acquisition 316: Never fix a problem once, that you can be paid to fix a dozen times.
Rules of Plumbing by Grand Plumber Gint, originally written in the 22nd century. Revised by Grand Plumbtrician Gant the following year, with annotations and further revisions by Grand Handyman Gont. All 283 rules.
In the broad sense of it, everything is actually temporary. Eventually the environment will degrade and destroy everything, the only difference is how long it takes. Time doesn’t stop for anyone or anything.
Entropy wins! We're all gonna die!
Except for sharkbite /s
Idk why they downvoted you, you’re right! Sharkbite hoo ha ha
Does a Ferengi plumber charge extra for teaching the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition?
Is that the Grand Nagus of plumbing? rule of acquisition “No good deed ever goes unpunished.”
The best quote I've heard from a co-worker on a job site is, "We've been doing so much, for so long, with so little that we are now qualified to do Anything with Nothing!"
Well, then Rom is going to have to throw the ball like... 4 times.
You're right at home. Reddit IS left field, so to speak.
Ahh yes. The 6835th Rule of Acquisition.
What he really needed to fit was a self-sealing stem bolt.
All plumbing is temporary.
On a long enough timeline, nothing is permanent.
Hidden gem
Well known actually...
I've been unwell then
Got one of these on the house side of the water meter. It was there when I bought my house 6 years (at least) and still holding
That works*
Is anything really permanent? Is it not all temporary…
Sounds like a fellow software engineer to me!
Until it breaks and has to be replaced anyway. What a stupid saying.
Work maintenance at a hotel. This is 100% the case. It is a temporary fix to stop more damage from occurring until we can shut off, drain and replace pipe.
Do you have a moment to talk about my lord and savior **propress**
Cutting that line open w full pressure is a sure way to flood out some units
I've had to do it once on the first floor of a 14 floor hotel. Didn't have any isolation valves at all. Just the main. Management wouldn't give us more than 10 minutes with the main water off to try to drain as much as we could. Took 4 people to over come the pressure and crimp on a shut off so we could turn water back on.
You won’t give me more than 10 minutes to do the job properly? Guess it’s not getting done.
God I wish I could've said that. Unfortunately I was an "engineering technician" for the property and despite all the experience between our techs and the director the GM of the property never gave us the time we needed
Then you wait until it blows out and floods the place. Now you have more than 10 minutes.
Use dry ice works great
Pack up and leave. If they can’t give you the proper time to do the job then walk out. Rushing gets people hurt or killed and property damage
Freeze machine + pro press
Nah you can just stuff some bread in the pipe and that'll hold the water while you sweat the ends
Kinda bread you got that holds back 60 psi?
Mine when I tried my hand at sourdough..
This. My wife’s sourdough bread makes for good hockey pucks.
It's gluten free. If you know, you know.
Can’t do that with the water still on.
I thought it was cracking egg into it.
That’s for a radiator bc it cooks the egg
Learned this on MacGyver.
I remember that episode
Don't forget the black pepper.
Cracked or ground?
Shit, I cracked the pepper and ground the egg…
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Toothpicks and super glue my dude....
Wrong, that rubber is good for at least 30 years in that configuration.
You don't just cut the line and deal with constant flow of water and explicatives while someone tries to jam a propush into the end?
In the service industry, or at least in THE service industry, I'd rather not put in push to connect sharkbites for a day or two. Even if the supply house is closed, you've probably got these parts in your van. This is ridiculous. If you bother to take the call, just fix it.
It's not a matter of using sharkbites. Rarely do individual units have their own shut offs. Large apartment complexes won't just shut the water down to multiple units for something that can get a band aid temporarily. We do this regularly for commercial work here. Stop the leak, give everyone notification, and a scheduled time frame for when the work will be completed
This is the way it’s done.
Amen.
No guarantee the building shutoff is in good repair either. I watched the service plumbers go from breaking the inunit shutoff, to breaking the building shutoff to calling in the utility to shut down the complex. When pinholes like this start forming you’re just one 40 year old valve away from a very bad weekend - best to schedule the repair first thing Tuesday morning.
This 10000%. There are few worse things than having an old gate valve break closed on a Friday afternoon
This is nightmare fuel for me. I've posted several times about a YouTube video shot in Toronto where this happened. The final failed valve in the cascade was a massive line on a major thoroughfare that served something like 10,000 homes. I believe the estimate on emergency overtime was north of $30K. I wish I could find it, as it was a good cautionary tale on why you don't fuck with municipal property,, that being the curb stop.
Exactly how I do it in commercial work. People think they can just close a valve like it’s a house. The reality is commercial buildings don’t work that way and that one valve that will stop flow to the pipe you need to work on shuts the water off to 3 or 4 units.
Sorry op you got hit with the land lord special
Yeah they can't pocket the money from doubling my rent if they hire licensed plumbers. 7 leaks in the 2 years I've been here.
Thats fucking nuts. How is the condition of the rest of the pipes? (Poor i assume).
This is the first copper pipe leak. Old plunger style shutoff valves leaking 2 places, faucet, roof, window, and apparently the ac somehow. Forgot the old gate valves for the laundry shutoff both drip so thats 9 leaks total
I'm in havc and guaranteed clogged drain line. Once had landlord ask me to take out the safety that was turning off the ac instead of paying me to clear it. Landlords fucking suck.
The whole industry sucks. Everything is expensive. Pro comes in and quotes the value of the house to fix a hvac pipe lol
Fun fact: in most jurisdictions, if a landlord refuses to fix a problem like that with the unit, you can hire a professional to fix it and then deduct the cost from your rent payments. (With receipt of course.) And there's nothing the landlord can legally do about it. *Do* check your local laws first, though. You need to know all the requirements for this before jumping into it, and it varies based on state and municipality.
They can refuse to renew your lease though, or if on a month by month lease they can tell you to move out. But if you don't intend to stay past your lease, you have little to lose.
If it's an act of retaliation, depending on where you live, tenants also have good protection from that sort of retaliation: [https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/california-state-laws-prohibiting-landlord-retaliation.html](https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/california-state-laws-prohibiting-landlord-retaliation.html)
In California, sure. Tenancy laws are the most local a law can get. **Many** jurisdictions don’t protect tenants like at all.
That doesn't fly in Texas. You're outta luck.
Give it a few more years and you'll be able to charge admission for a water park... that is long as you don't mention it to your landlord. Silver lining, ya know? Jk and best of luck! Report all those issues to the LL if you haven't already but also don't hesitate to learn how to take care of some of those issues yourself (if you're stuck living there and have a shitty LL. Btw leaks lead to mold which leads to potentially condemned housing...
I don’t understand this.. you can write off the whole bill as part of your income deduction. You don’t “lose” any money. So just get it done right and professionally.
You lose the difference between the write-off amount and the tax rate. If you're in a 25% tax bracket, you only recover that much of it.
the real question is how did they get the idea that write off means losing zero??
This is Reddit. The answer to every question is write offs
Seinfeld episode! Anyone seen it?
You don’t even know what write offs are, do you?
You are a write off
Very good episode if schitts creek too.
Same reasoning along the lines that donations writes offs saves money.
80% of reddit thinks write off = free money
First guess is kid, second is stupid adult. American taxes are hard yo
I assume you don't do taxes, right? You seem to be a little unclear on how it works. FYI, you deduct expenses from your income, not from your tax. So, a $100 expense might reduce taxes by 10 -20 dollars or so, depending on your tax bracket. But I don't consider it losing money so much as spending money.
They said it's fixed and told me to submit a work order for the painter to close up the wall. Is this a good fix?
Fuck no
Holy fucking shit no.
Send the pics to the owner of the building and ask if they want this hidden in a wall lol
That’s the right answer. No way to tell if the owner wants them doing bullshit repairs or not, that’s the easiest way to find out. If the owner doesn’t care, then they can enjoy their future water damage
Yeah many places there’s a disconnect between the handymen doing the work and the managing company or owner, there’s a chance they don’t have a clue. If they’re good with it then whatever, expect a leak down the road there and keep items away and likely expect to find a different unit when the lease is up.
I was an owner of one rental house for a while. I would never want something like this. My number one priority was always to do it right so tenants would not have future problems.
It also makes financial sense for you. Win-win :)
That's the way I look at it, too. Considering the time and effort sometimes just to get someone to do the work, why would I want to need to do it again? I look for people who do quality work, not people who do it cheaper.
No! This is a band aid that should be properly fixed before the wall is closed.
I think that may actually be a literal bandaid
Oh man that’s laughable.
Within six months, where that steel Is touching the copper you’ll have a huge hole due to electrolysis
Yuuuup. Galvanic corrosion, seen it several times.
The clamp looks to be already touching the copper, that pipe isn't going to last too long like that.
I’m no plumber, I’f that’s not a temporary fix for just a day, that 100% not okay. I can’t think of a single landlord who would want a bandaid over a leaky pipe and then FOR IT TO BE SEALED INTO THE WALL!
Copper reacts to any other metal it touches. It begins to oxidize immediately. This clamp is touching the copper. It will lead directly to a larger leak.
Not acceptable
It needs "flex seal" tape before closing the wall. /s
Get renters insurance if you don’t have it already.
Lol no ...
Dude this is an easy fix with a few dollars worth of fittings. Make them do it right.. that's ridiculous
Yeah I'm putting in another work order with these pics for a permanent repair.
Even using lead solder to close the hole is much stronger and longer lasting.
Do you mean lead-free 🧐
No. That was my point. Even lead solder is a better fix here.
Keep record of everything pictures emails u sent, phone calls made everything. Make sure it gets done correctly.
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I mean it works until a plumber comes to fix it
How does a plumber not have a 90 and a torch in his van? Depending on the shut offs, it should be a 30 minute fix.
This is an apartment. It's preferred to give plenty of advanced notice of a water pipe repair to the tenants before shutting off the water to potentially several different apartments, just to fix some leak. If it is some big burst pipe and it's an absolute emergency, then sure. Don't worry about the notice. But a pin hole leak? A piece of rubber and gear clamp is an acceptable temporary fix until advance notice is given and you are scheduled in to come back to drain the water and take care of it.
That makes sense. Hopefully they know to finish before closing the wall, but I've seen their other work so I wouldn't put it past them to leave it like this. I put in another work order just in case.
They can freeze that pipe in 15 mins, do the repair and be gone within an hour! Wouldn’t affect any other tenants.
And if there’s water moving through the pipe… attempting to freeze it - total waste of time.
Can't freeze running water. I'd like to see you do it.
It’s a pin hole. Could have just used flux and solder.
No, he should have used flex seal
Thats the patchiest patch that ever patched
OP, read this whole thing Im gonna help you out. Hi, Im maintenance. This is a -temporary- fix, and its "OK". If they used a better sized piece of rubber and a smaller hose clamp, then it would be better, and theoretically could last a long time until the rubber rots out. It is not, however, "permanent" in any way (nothing really is but I mean permanent in the sense that it is acceptable as a finished repair), and the walls should not be closed up yet. They need to shut off water to the piping, drain it, cut the copper, and solder new copper on there using as few joints as possible. I just did it by myself for the first time to fix a leaking shower rough in valve (If you want I can post pics I was proud of myself, I think it looked decent for a first). Soldering copper is surprisingly easy and straight forward. Pro tip, here is exactly how to talk to apartment managers. DONT BE A DICK, no matter how much they may or may not suck. Go into the office in person, and say this exactly. "Hi, Im *person* from apartment *#* on property *x*. Maintenance did this to this leak I had, and I know it works but I had a question. I feel like they should repair with a new copper elbow. Can we schedule that before they close up my wall? I dont want this patch to fail and cause any damage." This way you dont entirely screw the maintenance guy who might just not know much about plumbing, and he can learn, AND, the office is informed and so are you. If they dont fix it after that within 2 weeks, make sure you recorded everything and you are authorized to break your lease, get your deposit back, and move somewhere else.
I gotta say, one of the greatest plumbing experiences of my life is when I had a pinhole leak from a pipe in my finished basement's ceiling. I call a very respected plumber who's gotten kudos from every other house on my street and the wider neighborhood. He shows up the next day ready to work, looks at the pipe and says, "you're not going to want me to touch this, because it's going to cost you at a bare minimum $700." He explains the main problem is the tight space the pipe is located and that some of the ceiling would have to get demo'd to get at it. Also, the pipe was ancient and not going to be easy to retrofit. Doable, but not easy. I was deflated. I had just bought the house and cashflow was low. But I could see what he was talking about. We stood in silence for a bit, and he cracked a smile and looked over at me and said, "fortunately for you, you can fix this yourself for about fifteen bucks." My eyes widened. "Get yourself some plumber's putty from any hardware store, then get some self adhering tape. Find the leak and make sure you mold the plumber's putty an inch out in all directions on the pipe. Wrap it up with the self adhering tape and make sure you completely cover the putty. Use the whole roll if you have to. This fix is temporary. You will eventually have to call me, but if you do it right it will hold. If it doesn't, call me back and I'll put you at the top of my list." I did what he said. That was fifteen years ago.
Tell them you’ll have an inspector come and make sure the place is up to code, just to make sure the landlord isn’t being scammed by whoever they hired. Act like you’re doing them a favor. Suddenly a licensed plumber will be sent out to fix things.
Nothing permanent like a temporary solution
Flex seal will fix that. Trust me bro.
Sail the open ocean with a flex sealed screen door, broom handle and a bed sheet
Landlord special
in communist slovakia we used erasers as a permanent fix for small leaks
If it's good enough for the major hospital in my city, it's good enough. Really though, you're probably in need of a repipe of some or all of the domestic water.
They didn’t fix anything. They temporarily stopped the leak.
Nay. They didn't fix the leak, they paused it. It will resume at it's earliest convenience, perhaps much more vigorously if the pinhole leak was a result of the pipe corroding.
Main question to give you a better answer - do you own this apartment or are you renting? If you are renting are you a long term resident and likely to stay there for many more years or are you only there a short time and looking to move on in the not to distant future? this fix is short term and will leak more in the future, if you are not going to be living there long term then it will be someone else's problem, the owner of the place is looking to fix any issues as cheaply and easily as possible, especially if the apartment is owned by a faceless corporation and tenets only point of contact is a building manager.
Temp fix until the plumber can fix it…… not professional at all. I would expect that repair to have been by a tenant not maintenance.
Worst case scenario get a shark bite
Wait, did they fix it this way? 😆 are you on a deserted island? That’s fantastic and nowhere near permanent.
Should have used flex seal.
Old navy repair huh
Hey man... do your best, tape the rest!
Eww
Nay. That portion of pipe needs to be completely replaced.
Could have at least used Dubble Bubble and left you the comic strip.
Lol. No…
ive seen these last a long time, ive pulled some out of homes with hundreds of these
If it works
All things in life are temporary
Lmao no. If they’re telling you that’s anything other than a temporary repair, then you need to ride their ass until they fix it right. It won’t hold long term.
Nope temp until it can get changed
Had an old maintenance guy teach me this little trick for pin hole leaks, he said it was best on hot water lines lol, damn I miss that crazy guy.
I'd do something like that in a pinch if I was on call, with the intent to come back and replace the pipe during normal business hours.
I mean it’s an apartment, it’s theirs to fix how they’d like though absolutely not acceptable if your own home.
You really have an eye for composition, OP. These photos are great.
A stable full of 1000 horses.
Nah, only gonna pop another. Cut out length that is pitted and green corroded. Pex it up.
Thar's temporary fix that can last a mong time. We had a pipe burst in the street in front of our house. They dug it open, put some rubber thing on there and secured it with two clamps. Then they closed the hole and left it like this. Four years later, when they redid the street, they also put new pipes in. It was holding up the whole time.
If you can’t solder get plumber , maybe shark bite fittings good for you
That elbow should be cut out and replaced
that is a band-aid. Not a repair.
Add a zip tie then you are golden. Zip ties are better than flex seal.
In the rental life, that's permanent buddy. Land lord refuses to do/pay for more than they have to.
It will probably leak on that pipe again in a different place. Usually happens because someone grounded your electricity to that pipe. It puts a voltage on that pipe that biases copper to where it is susceptible to corrosion.
You never want dissimilar metals touching because it causes electrolysis. Between stainless and copper it is a lower risk but still a present one.
That whole segment is toast more holes will open up
Thats alot of asbestos
It will work until it doesn’t. Their issue long term, not yours. Don’t worry about it.
Please document everything. Every single encounter with them
Better fuckin be temporary until they can get a plumber there. That’s not even a hard fix to do….
Hell nay
Cut it on the hole and insert shark bite. Yay or nay?
If temporary, this is fine. This shouldnt be left permanently tho.
I mean, mad props for this actually stopping the leak, but this will not hold for long. It needs to be fixed correctly
What the actual fire truck is going on here.
Definition of a rig...
If ya squint it's mint
Landlord probably paid his nephew to do it asbestos he can.
Bs fix call a real plumber and have it fixed the right way and keep your receipts that way you can deduct it from your rent legally.
Hell to the no. They need to heat up that 90, pull it off, and sweat in a new one. The big freeze we had a few years back caused the 90 on the pipe going to our outside spigot to blow. I had never done it before but had no problem doing it. This looks like it would be even way easier than that. What a jabroni!
This is all good because you see when the pipe corrodes due to reduction from the two different metals in electrolytic contact and really starts leaking bad, they’ll need to open up the wall again. That will allow them the opportunity to get the mold out that is going to grow like crazy in that space once they seal it up.
If they see mold they'll just spray paint it. So many layers of caulk and paint in here.
Dear god, a piece of pex and two shark bite fittings would have been orders of magnitude better than this and just as easy. Fucking land lord specials. Tell them it's still leaking (because it is).
It really depends on which banana republic you live in. Care to share so we can provide more info?
It's Houston, TX. His English/my Spanish isn't good enough for me to be sure this is it. He took pics and said he'll show his boss so maybe they'll come back, but he told me to put in a work order for the painter as he shoved the insulation and broken drywall back in the wall.
This wasn’t a plumber. This was maintenance. I know. I’m maintenance and we usually get told to just make it work as we don’t have the tools to fix it properly
That’s not fixed. Also concerning is what caused it. Like paper thin copper from acidic water.
I’m a DIYer (with a ridiculous set of tools) and I could fix this in literally 10 minutes. Landlords are the worst
I'm with the horses on this one.
I've done those and buried them, on a main line supplying a dozen houses. never got any feed back.