So yeah, plumbing...

Plumbing is not all that complicated when you know the steps... first you buy the parts you need. When you are patching a pipe thats a coupling like the ones shown below. Note that one of them has a little dimple? That is to allow it to stop halfway through on the pipe, the other one is what we want for this particular plumbing project so that we can cut the pipe exactly the same length as the old pipe.

Next you have to clean off the remainder of the gunk from the old pipe, and add what is called flux which helps both clean the pipe and acts as sort of a lubricant for the solder you will have to add next.

Now, you're ready for some fire. There are two types of torches that can be used for this purpose, one is a propane type one (blue bottle) and then theres the right one, which is some magical stuff that burns hotter and comes in a yellow bottle. Its more expensive, but worth it... I'm using the blue crap..

Now you are all set, ready to roll as it were. All we have to do is heat it up, add the solder and if everything works as it should we should have a patch...

Now those of you that know what you are doing, know that this doesn't look right... What I should have done is cut a smaller segment out, like say one smaller than the couplings you see in the photo. Problem I had was the zero clearance pipe cutter I was using kept threading the pipe instead of cutting it... As you would predict, I couldn't get a clean seal on the pipes because all of the flux basically melted all at the same time...

As with almost everything, doing it on the cheap, and as fast as you can is not the right way to do plumbing.... After i patched this one, leaks and all, I checked for more and found two other leaks... So after it took me 3 attempts to get a seal that would sort of hold water, I gave up and called a plumber...Took him 3 hours, but it was worth it as there are no more leaks now...