Re: I cracked a water pipe ...
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Can I replace it with PVC?
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This would be a bad idea. When it comes to plumbing and your house you should avoid bandaids. If you have access to the pipe just repair with copper. You can buy everything you'll need for less than $40. If you don't think you can do it I'd advise hiring someone.
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How hard would this be to do, sounds like it might be something I could try? The pipes are real easy to get at, it's probably a total of about 2 feet with a 90 degree elbow in the middle and a fitting on each end. Never sweated copper joints before. I'm guessing, I need a torch kit, flux, solder, and the copper. Am I drawing to an open ended straight, or do I need a 5 on the turn and another 5 on the river? Thanks for the help?
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If the pipes are easy to get at, you should be fine. Turn off the water supply, cut off on either side of the joint, leaving yourself enough pipe to work with, and splice a new joint right in. You need a few feet of pipe (comes in different sizes, usually 3/8ths or 1/2 inch for this, I can't remember), a 90 degree elbow, two connectors (little copper sleeves to connect the str8 pipes), the torch kit, flux, solder, a tubing cutter, and sandpaper/brushes to clean the pipe. A few things:
Make sure you clean the pipes well everywhere you will solder, with sandpaper or wire brush.
Try to find a valve below the connection that you can use to empty the pipes of water. Trying to solder water-filled pipes sucks.
I'd cut everything out and put it all together before re-soldering a single joint. Once it's all together, you can solder everything at once.
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