Quick Ways to Fix a Leaky Pipe
One day after several months of being the new owner, my ears caught the sound of running water behind the bathroom wall!
Being on a limited income, I decided to research my options for this problem. I knew that it had to be a drain pipe problem because the sound of the running water would come and go shortly after the water was shut down and the drains were clear.
My husband took on the challenge of tearing everything apart to get to the problem. First, he had to turn the water off in the bathroom that is for the sink faucets. Then he had to disconnect the pipes underneath the sink. Which meant, the pipe that leads to the faucets and then the drain piping.
Once the piping was removed, he took the sink out of the cabinet and then he took out the cabinet which left a whole back wall with the small openings where the pipes and drain pipes came through.
My husband then took an exacto blade knife and cut out the wall board that surrounded the drain pipe. He had to remove a good size piece of the plaster board in order to get to the area where the leak was at. Once inside the wall, it did not take him long to locate the leak.
The piping consisted of some newer plastic pipe that was connected to some older lead pipe and shortly after the plastic pipe just beyond the first connection of the new and the old pipe was about a 2 inch hole on the underside of the older pipe!
The question now, was how should we fix this? The plan we came up with was pretty unique and quite simple. We took a 12 oz plastic bottle, cut both ends off of it and sliced it the long way all the way across. We then took it and wrapped it around the leak making sure that the sliced side was in the upward position of the pipe. Holding it tightly around the pipe, we then took duct tape and wrapped that around several times tightly. The last thing we did to ensure this would last, we purchased a rubber boot and two end clamps to also put around this same area. After this was done, we ran water from the kitchen sink since it has an adjoining water source and both drains go down together.
No more leaks and it was time to put everything back.
To put the wall back, my husband took some white duct tape and sealed the seam up with that which was a real work of art because he could hardly tell that the wall had been taken out and put back. This was done around 2005.
Now it is December, 2012 and I once again heard the water noises in the wall. My first assumption was that our patch job had finally gave out and needed a new make over!
Once again, my husband tore apart the sink, plumping and wall to get to the leak problem. When my husband first saw the past job we had originally had done, he exclaimed, “I don’t see where it is leaking at?”
I told him to keep looking maybe it wasn’t there. Much to his surprise, he found a new leak down a little bit further in the older lead cast iron piping,
He did not fix this leak the same way as he did the last one. This time he used fiber-glass tape and wrapped that around the leaky pipe. He had to wait about 15 mintutes until it set and hardened. He also did a boot wrap around this leak as he did the last one. He did not do the plastic bottle wrap around this time.
Since he had to cut out more of the wall to get to the new leak, he had to do some extra taping of the white duct tape. This job only cost him around $30.00 to fix this leak.
