If you're having tires go flat and you can't find the culprit, it's probably one of two things. Pinch flat (look for TWO holes instead of just one) or a bad rim strip.

If you have a rubber rim strip, replace it with a cloth one. If you already have a cloth one, check to make sure it's in place properly and is not ripped and allowing a bare metal edge to show.

Just swapped out tubes. The old one with the patch had air leaking out from one side of the patch. So should I attempt to re-patch or write this tube off? To be honest, the puncture was big enough for me to a) hear the hiss, b) feel the air on my skin, and c) actually see it. It wasn't the minor pinpricks that I'm used to having to hunt down (usually have to resort to the ol' bubbles in the sink trick to find the holes).

FWIW, the tires are stock. The bike is an '06 model that I bought in '08 with the intention of commuting to work, but never got around to doing so until last year. I don't believe they are dry rotted, and there is still flashing (is that the term for the little spiky things along the edge?) on both tires. And the wheels do have rubber rim strips.

Are these the type that look like big rubber bands, and have no adhesive?
If so, the downside is they may shift while installing & inflating the tire, allowing the tube to contact the sharp edges of the spoke holes.

Not usually. The big destroyer of rubber is UV light and ozone, and a tube inside a tire is pretty protected from either. It's pretty common to find a bike that's been sitting long enoug the tires have rotted, but the tubes are still perfectly good. One of the tubes I was using until last summer was a 30 year old Michelin tube that had a dozen or so patches in it. The tire it was in died a rather spectacular failure which killed it. but it leaked less day to day than the new, never patched one that's still in the front thweel of the bike.

In my experience, tubes can easily dry rot or otherwise degrade while on the shelf, but not inside the tire. The stem can degrade though since it's exposed to light.

Spare tubes and tires should be kept in a basement or closet, ideally where it's dark and cool. They should keep many years in a cool, fairly dry and dark basement. In fact the chief mechanic for the USPS team famously "ages" all the team's tires in a basement in France for 2 or 3 years before they use any of them.

In the grand scheme of things, it's a pretty small waste. I'm sure that every person who has replied to this thread has wasted money/environmental resources on some item for their bike that is less useful than a new tube. The act of riding a bike to work instead of driving pretty much negates any possible wastefulness derived from not patching an old tube. For those that choose to get new tires rather than replace, there could be lots of plausible reasons. It's quite possible to have lots of sense & still decide that a new tube is worth it.

Also may I add I think its time to replace the tube when you get a flat on top of the patch, which has happened once haha

You beat me to it.

You can patch until you can't patch anymore because of overlap or leaks at the valve stem.

I've never counted, but I have pulled out an inner tube and been shocked at how many patches it had.

I have some 700:35 Schwalbe tubes that have been patched a few times and plan to keep these in service until they cannot be patched... with fully threaded stems UV breakdown is not an issue and they came to me with a number of patches and have been good for well over 20,000 km without suffering any additional flats.

Back in '82, I fished an abandoned MT bike out of the local marina. It had been in there long enough that some critters of some sort (maybe barnacles?) had produced a zillion little holes in both tubes. The bike was not so rusted out that it was not ride-able.
Dad ran an automotive repair shop and I had access to the tire gear, including the patches. I pretty much ended up with tubes made out of patches when I was done! Rode that bike for the whole summer.

No patience = zero times.

Another "til the valve falls off" guy here.

I used to just replace the tube, but these days it depends. If it's the front tire, i'd probably just change the tube and patch it once I got to my destination to use as the spare. If it's the back, I'll find the hole without taking the wheel off and patch it while it's still on the bike to avoid the mess from all the chain grease, plus I don't have to deal with the derailleur, or messing with my chain tension if it's my fixie with that technique.

I replace a tube when a patch on it fails. I've reached eight patches a couple of times, with patch overlap.

I usually patch twice. No rhyme or reason, just something left over in my thinking from many years ago. I do believe that the manufacturers of the glue need to put more in those little tubes, as I run out after a few patches. I usually carry glueless patches as well, but I don't feel as comfortable with those.

My last flat (and only one on this pair of gatorskins) was a bent valve. I haven't had any other flats in recent times...

One tube is, sure. But how many bikes worldwide get a flat every day? If each one threw their tube in the trash each time they flatted, the pile of rubber would be a mountain before long. Patching is so easy, cheap and effective that I don't see a reason to not do it for run of the mill punctures.

You might not see a reason to do it, but that doesn't mean that people who choose not to don't have any sense. People hwo choose not to might not want to spend the time patching, or they may have had a bad experience with a patch failing in the past, or they may have decided that buying a tube only costs $3 more than a patch kit & is therefore worth the cost, especially if they have infrequent flats.

Sure, if every single person in the entire world who got a flat tire threw them away, that would be a large pile of rubber, but that scenario is never going to happen. The cost/benefit analysis is different for everyone & lots of people will choose to patch for whatever reason.

My point in the post was that, just because people choose to do something different than what you would do in a particular situation does not mean that they lack sense, only that they have different motivations than yours.

I'm trying to figure out what the perceived benefit to not patching is. People have said that to them it's "worth it" to buy a new tire but I don't see what's gained by doing so. A patch kit costs $3 and patching the tire takes about 3 or 4 minutes, less money and less time than it takes to buy a new tube, and it takes about 2 minutes to learn how to do patches properly and they'll never leak.

What would be nice is if people who just throw the tubes away would deliver them to a bike co-op or something where people could reuse them.

Personally I grew up learning to always patch my tires from like the age of 10 or so, the idea of putting a new tube in was never really introduced to me till I hit college (atleast not unless the tube had experienced a major blowout).

The thing was I never used glue-less patches, and I was taught to massage the patch onto the tube after application (Bend it over your knee, stretch it, mold it down so that you got the best contact area.) I still to this day hunt old tubes out of my LBS trash cans and patch them just for the free tube.

It takes MORE time to patch a tire than to replace it with a new one. Your example assumes that you need to go out & buy a tube, but have the patch kit at home. It takes less time to just replace the tire if you assume the same conditions for both (either having both in stock, or having to buy both). Unless you get a lot of flats, the cost difference is almost too small to calculate. I've had one flat in the past two years (730 days approx). Since a new tube costs around $6 & a patch kit is $3, it works out to a daily cost of approx. 4/10 of one penny per day. There is a small chance that a patch will fail (if it's not applied correctly) while there is ALMOST zero chance that a tube will fail.

To answer the question, peace of mind is gained. It's a similar thought pattern to changing your own brakes. They aren't that hard to do, but for many people it's worth the additional cost to make sure that they will not fail when needed.

Donating them to a co-op is not a bad idea. If I start to get more flats, I'll save them & when I get a few, I'll swing by & drop them off.

Not always. If you find the puncture right away sometimes you can unseat the tire, pull out a small section of tube, apply the patch, and reseat without ever taking off the wheel. I'd be hard pressed to replace a tube more quickly than that. Maybe I'm slow at replacing a tube, but it definitely takes me longer than the patch method I just described (which admittedly can't always be used).

It's not a big deal if you prefer to replace the tube and not patch it. I'm surprised at how many people won't patch though.

One other reason I patch, is that if I'm riding with my wife and kids, I'd have to carry at least three sizes of tubes to cover everyone's wheel sizes -- and that's assuming I can get by with one that's not ideally sized if I need to.

Run that math out for a few flats:

3 flats you spend 18$ on tubes.
3 flats and you spend 3$ on a patch kit. Cost per leak is 1$.

A patch kit is a small investment that saves money over the long term. It requires no more tools than you'd have to have to replace a tube and they all come with easy-to-follow instructions. I show kids at the co-op how to patch their own tires anyone can do it. Anyone that worries about the 5 extra minutes it takes to patch vs. new must be making pretty decent coin, but then I gotta wonder why they wouldn't pay someone to change the tube for them since their time is so valuable. But I've already spent more time posting in this thread than I have patching tubes :)

We're moving toward being a disposable society so I think the "new tube = better" thing is a symptom of that. But if buying new tubes makes you happy go for it. A new tube can get a puncture just as easily as a patched one so I don't really worry about it either way.

Unless you get flats infrequently. In which case the glue has dried up in your patch kit & you need to replace it anyways. I spend $6 on tubes every 2 years. Spending $18 over 6 years doesn't necessarily mean that i'm making 'pretty decent coin' unless we're talking about using developing world standards, even assuming that I was on my first set of patches/glue after 6 years. I'm sure it was 'just to make a point' but 'hiring someone to replace my tire' doens't make sense from any standpoint. First, I almost always get flats when I'm out riding, not sitting around the house. In order to make this work, I'd need to find someone to call who could respond before I could get the tire off the bike myself, in order to make your time analysis work.

I'm not sure why people are so militant about other people buying replacement tubes for their bikes. In the grand scheme of things, I don't feel that choosing the perceived safety of a new tube makes me any less of a steward of the environment than someone who fixez their tubes, especially when you consider that both of us are bike commuters to begin with & I'm certain that everyone waste money on some uncecessary bike-related item.

If you are replacing the tube on the tire, then yes that would MIGHt be faster. I'm still not sure with the wiating time for the glue to set though.

Good point about riding with others. I'm not normally responsible for other's tubes, so it doens't impact me.

My $2.79 patch kit has 20 patches (plus several larger ones). Cost is more like 12 cents a patch.

I actually have never opened the tubes of glue in my patch kit, I save them in case I need to patch on the road (which I've never had to do, I use the spare tube I have with me (which is also patched)). I use the rubber cement in the $3 bottle of office rubber cement that I've had for about 15 or 20 years now. It's about half empty.

I didn't count the time it takes for the glue to dry in my 3 minute estimate. I put the glue on and let the tube sit while I do other stuff; I don't sit there and stare at the tube. I come back 10 or 15 minutes later and apply the patch. Ideally I'll clamp it in a bench vice for half an hour or so too, though if I am not near the vice I'll just squish it as hard as I can with my fingers for 10 seconds. Either way works OK.

I patch BECAUSE I don't get flats very often. I've had the spare tubes in my garage fall apart in my hands when I tried to use them because they'd been there for 4 or 5 years and had dry rotted.

Assuming that you have the materials for both types of repair jobs, it's still faster to replace the tube, even without counting the time it takes for the glue to set. You pull it off, put the new one on & are done. With a patch kit, you take it off, have to rough up the surface, apply the glue, apply the patch, etc. Granted, we aren't talking about major amounts of time, but we're also not talking about major amounts of money the other way.

I don't have any issue with people who patch their tubes, I get it & can appreciate it. But some people clearly take issue with the fact that others choose to buy new tubes. There are valid reasons to do both & it's not like there is one correct answer. It all depends on the individual situation.

Use glueless patches, and you don't need to wait for the glue to set.
The caveat is that the glueless patch is temporary measure just to get home.

Clearly the new tube contingent are wrong, wrong, wrong. There is no valid reason to throw out a repairable tube, but I'm not judging. ;)

J/K. I try to be a good steward of the environment but I'm far from perfect on that count so I'm not going to point fingers.

Anyway, I avoid patching on the road. I'll replace the tube and patch when I get home. For me this is quicker than getting a new one. We don't have a ton of storage and I try not to keep a lot of extra stuff around. This means not having a bunch of spare tubes. I use 3 different sized tires on my winter bike alone, which are all different from my road bike. My wife's road bike is 27" with Schrader valves, her MTB is 26". One kid bike has 24" inch tires, and the other 20". I'm not even sure what the Burley uses.

If you factor in the amount of time it takes to stop at an LBS to get a new tube or even ordering online, patching is quicker.

I spent a good long while trying to learn how to patch a tube. maybe my problem is that i run these tubes at 100 psi. i tried patching about a dozen times without a single success before giving up. (yes, i tried that...and that....and that....) sure, i might have been doing something wrong but hell if i could figure it out. maybe it had to do with the weather?

patching is cool but its not always practical.