sweating/flux ?'s

Have two questions relating to sweating & flux.

1) Have read in numerous posts on various boards about refluxing a joint while sweating a joint. Am I to take it that flux can be added to a joint while sweating it? Is this is in fact an accepted procedure?

2) Have also read that if joint has leak that you can reheat joint and apply flux to hole and re-solder. It is rare when I have a leak, but have always just replaced fitting and done over. Again, is this an accepted procedure?

Thanks,
Matt

As long as there has been no water in the pipe, you can add flux, reheat, and add solder. Once water has been in the pipe and has leaked, you need to start over by disassembling the joint, cleaning, and start over from scratch.

One water has been in the joint, most plumbers will cut the joint out and replace.

That would also include heating the joint, removing, cleaning, fluxing and reassembling.

Once water has washed the flux out, you need to start over as if it was new.

Adding flux to the outside of a complete joint won't do anything to fix it.
It's what is inside that counts.

You can reuse a fitting, if you remove it and clean it up some.