I like soldered joints. But I'm just a DIY'er homeowner. I had assumed that the plumbers pay for the expensive pro-press tools and parts so that they don't have to burn some of the walls and fixtures and risk starting a fire inside a wall. Soldered joints are just so much easier to "trust" since the way it works is the heat sucks the solder well into all of the joint. But........ when you are soldering very close to walls, you can burn stuff or even start a fire inside the wall so what I do is spend lots of time prepping, even spraying down any insulation in the wall to get it wet. Then, I double check for fires over the next 25 minutes. The annoying thing about soldering copper pipe yourself now is that I never see the "fire blankets" stocked at Home Depot or Lowes. And you really need to find those fire blankets to tape up over wall or fixture to keep the damage down from the torch. However, most people have 2 day shipping with Prime now so I guess you can just order it.
Something that is interesting though is that the Pro Press tools are huge and can't fit in tight spaces. So it's kind of stupid to me that most plumbing companies switched to them. A highly skilled plumber can solder a 1/2 copper pipe in extremely tight spaces, even inside of walls or underneath bathtubs through a wall. You can't fit the big expensive Pro Press tools into tight spaces so it's kind of funny they are switching to it. I bet they get cheaper insurance if they don't use torches?
I love soldering my own repairs because the previous soldered pipe had last for 60 years and this is by the ocean in high humidity. And that's with mostly soft solder you use above ground. I bet if you hard soldered thick copper pipe it could last 80 to 100 years. (hard solder has a little bit of silver in it so it's expensive but that solder is not soft and won't get pin holes like the soft solder does). My 1957 Florida house near the ocean has now had at least 2 places where the old soft solder got pinholes. But that's a good run! For inside the dirt and concrete, I think they were supposed to braze or hard solder the copper pipe? So for so good.
