Top 10 causes of pipeline failures

A USA report from last year analyzed the 10 most common mistakes for serious pipeline failures. (What defines serious from superfluous I wonder?) More info here.

I think that 7 & 8 are big ones for water and wastewater.

Discovering a pin hole leak

Our children’s caregiver lives with us during the week and last night she came upstairs to say that she could hear water dripping. We have an old house and this is exactly the kind of thing that gives me palpatations when I hear it.

Investigation revealed that we did have a water leak but I could not find from where. Two years ago, we had a pipe freeze and burst which revealed itself with a light fixture filling up with water. We were lucky that we were home and caught that one when we did.

Thankfully, this time the old line had an isolation valve on it and so with relative ease I was able to close the valve and confirm that the dripping was slowing down. So I had the right pipe at least. I turned the line back on and climbed up on a chair and reached in towards the pipe and found a pin hole leak in one of the elbows. Wow, what causes that to show up?

I’ve read some of the reports that have associated excess flux on copper pipe soldering with pin hole leaks and maybe that’s what’s going on here. It’s not an easy failure to diagnose as compared to say the burst elbow from pipe freezing. It looked like someone had shot a bullet out of the elbow from inside. The pin hole leak for this elbow was on the top outside part of the elbow and I believe the flux leakage corrosion points were all along the invert or lower portion of copper pipe and not the upper side.

It’s in a tricky position to fix but that’s what my afternoon is going to look like.

Toronto Watermain break

Toronto Star has a picture to go with the story. Very cool for the star to use Google maps to show a location for the story. That’s a pretty nice touch but it’s static, couldn’t they link to  the proper Google map?
So the story provides some details, 24″ main, 50 years old, Cast Iron out of an average number of 1500 breaks per year. They don’t give an estimated target for restoration of service, which surprised me. I supose that if they said their standard target was 24 hours and missed it, then they’d be opening themselves up to lawsuits. They do talk about an inspection and detection program but claim, “we had no warning” that this watermain was susceptible. I find this claim dubious just based on a 50 year old, cast iron watermain that is 24 inches in diameter but I’d reserve judgement in favour of seeing a picture of the broken piece. That could give some idea as to the nature of the break, which is the part missing from the story and probably I’m the only reader in all of Toronto interested in that part.
Okay, the CBC story has the estimated in service target. One week.
CTV has a great piece of video. Hmm middle of the night, guy under the bridge who hears a sound like the bridge moving, that’s pretty rare to have a observer on site for a watermain break.

San Diego Water main breaks, floods 2-block area of Little Italy

An aging water pipe burst yesterday and flooded a two-block stretch of Little Italy near downtown San Diego, swamping at least one home and shutting off water for scores of people.

The 8-inch cast-iron pipe broke about 10:30 a.m. and flooded residences, businesses and at least two motels, according to spokeswoman Tedi Jackson of the city’s Water Department. It took more than 10 hours to repair the main and restore water to residents, Jackson said.

Full story here.

Cape asked to conserve water after burst pipe

The pipe, which is 1,6m in diameter, feeds water to the city’s reservoirs from the Vo‘lsvlei dam. It burst on Monday, affecting the five suburbs of Table View, Atlantis, Milnerton, Melkbosstrand and Duinefontein.

Full story here.

Water main break affecting leeward residents

Worse, a break this bad could leave the Waianae side water-less if residents don’t conserve right away.

“It moves water into our communities and fills up the reservoirs,” said Su Shin of the Board of Water Supply. “Now that we have a break to this main, we can’t fill that reservoir back up, so as people use the water in that reservoir, the reservoir level will keep dropping and dropping.”

The pipe carries 5 million to 7 million gallons of water to the leeward side daily.

Full story