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I just replaced my kitchen faucet with a new faucet that was sold-as is, in-box, from an auction. After spending hours trying to get the old faucet off (years of rust and corrosion), I installed the new faucet and connected the sprayer hose and hot and cold feed pipes to new plastic/mesh supply lines that connect to the copper underneath the sink. This faucet is a pull-down sprayer style faucet so all the water comes out the sprayer hose after entering the hot/cold mixer from the supply lines.

Well, I got it all set up and sealed up with teflon tape and everything looked great so we turned the water, when I noticed the smallest bead of water begin to form at the solder on the sprayer hose connection, where the copper pipe that is fed from the mixer attaches to the mesh hose. The water is coming from the joint where the copper pipe is soldered to the connector that the sprayer hose screws into-- that is, the solder that was done at the factory. It's a tiny, tiny leak (two out of four times I ran the water and did not see any water bead out) but it is clearly coming through a bad part of the solder and not from the threaded part of the connection.

The faucet was bought as-is from auction so factory warranty is out of the question, and it was such a pain getting it all installed that I'd really hate to have to go and replace the thing again (especially since faucets are expensive). Can I use plumber's putty to seal up the hole in the apparently bad solder or should I try to re-solder it? Do I have any other options?

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    While there may be a few super-strength adhesives that could seal the hole, plumber's putty is not one of those -- it's not really even an adhesive.
    – Hot Licks
    Dec 18, 2017 at 4:54
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    Trying to re-solder that joint will be risky because any mated plastic parts, including the flexible hose, are highly likely to sustain damage as a result of the heat required to make a solder joint.
    – Michael Karas ♦
    Dec 18, 2017 at 6:56
  • Sometimes seep leaks seal with use as fine particles from the pressure side are forced into the tiny hole. Use it for two weeks and see if the leak goes away. Letting some time pass will give you room to consider carefully what is happening; be patient. Does this leak only occur when the water is on? So the water is leaking under the counter, right?
    – Jim Stewart
    Dec 18, 2017 at 10:46
  • It's possible to get products that seal up pin holes in e.g. petrol tanks where rust has perforated the metal of the tank. Perhaps you can find some potable safe product like it to seal the hole (no need to remove; un-plumb the tap from the water supply,and plumb it into a spare bit of pipe, raise that pipe above the tap level and fill the tap with the sealant liquid (tap open), shut the tap, plumb it up, and use the mains pressure to force the sealant into the pinhole, then open the tap to flush the rest of the sealant out of the tap spout.. then unplumb everything, leave it to dry/cure
    – Caius Jard
    Dec 18, 2017 at 14:32
  • @HotLicks I refer to plumber's epoxy putty--which I have seen used to seal pinhole leaks in copper plumbing. Though of course I'm not dealing with a pinhole in a pipe but rather a bad solder joint, so perhaps that would make it unsuitable.
    – LegendaryDude
    Dec 18, 2017 at 16:17

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