Drips-and-Drains, Your Durbanville Plumber did another interesting burst pipe yesterday. Just by the way, not all these posts will be interesting to everyone, but I have been asked by a number of people to keep posting “plumbing related stuff” because people out there are benefiting from it. So, if it helps someone out there, here goes…
This client of your Durbanville Plumber had his house painted recently and the painters had used a storm water drain to wash and clean their paint brushes when finished their daily painting (presumably with turpentine, etc.) Now there are two poblems here: The first one is that it is not very “green“, and not very legal to wash chemicals, paint, etc. down a storm water line, and the second problem in this case was that there was a plastic (polycop) pipe running through this particular storm water drain. Exactly on the spot where this pipe was exposed to the chemicals it ballooned and burst. I believe that the chemicals weakened the polycop pipe. It bubbled and burst exactly on the spot where it was making contact with the chemicals used. I believe that over time the chemicals had actually weakened the wall of the pipe and with the pressure of the water it had burst. You can see in the two photographs taken by your Durbanville Plumber on site where the pipe had burst.
There is another lesson to be learned here for your Durbanville Plumber: My client in this case got up at two in the morning and went to pour himself a glass of water. He then noticed that the water pressure was unusually low. He then took his flashlight and walked around the property to investigate further to see if there is not perhaps a tap that was left open. This was when he passed by this particular storm water drain on his property and heard the hissing from the burst pipe and then saw the water spraying. Now let me add another important message at this point: I strongly advise you to contact your armed response team before disarming your alarm system and venturing out in the dark to investigate a possible burst pipe or open tap. I have heard that there have been instances where criminals actually shut off the water main in the evening hoping to gain access to your property when the home owners go to investigate. So please rather contact your armed response if you are in any doubt. As you can guess by now if you have been following my posts, we did chop open and replaced the polycop pipe with Class 1 SABS approved copper pipe.
