Timber Frame Hybrid Home - Owner Builder

[dave1949]

The advantage of using pipe with a gasket is that it can contract and expand with the soil. A common reason for pipe failure is fatigue from movement in the ground. Black Poly pipe is one of the worse for this and in my part of the country, it's a full time24/7 job for several crews in the city to repair them.

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Eddie

I see. Makes sense.

Black poly is reliable here. We don't have your expansive soils and the soil temperature at the depth of the pipe (about 6' if you don't want a freeze up) is pretty stable year-round.

Thanks Eddie.

 

[jk96]

The advantage of using pipe with a gasket is that it can contract and expand with the soil. A common reason for pipe failure is fatigue from movement in the ground. Black Poly pipe is one of the worse for this and in my part of the country, it's a full time24/7 job for several crews in the city to repair them.

If the leak is happening right after it's been buried, the cause is probably from being able to move too much in a bend or curve. The fill is never as compact as the undisturbed soil and that allows the pipe to move more then it should. Sacks of concrete should be placed in the hole to keep the pipes in place until the soil compacts.

Did you use grease to slide the pipes together? Not using it can cause the gaskets to turn and result in a leak.

Before doing anything drastic like cutting the pipe, dig down at intervals and look for moisture in the trench. 14 gallons isn't very much and it will take awhile for it to surface, or it might never come to the surface. The bottom of the trench should hold enough water that you should be able to see it when you get to it. Of course, with rain, that wont work until everything is dried out.

How do you know you have a leak? I had an issue with a water district on a house that I was flipping that said I used 40,000 gallons of water in one month in an empty house with the water turned off at the house. I spoke to a guy at another water district and he said that if the water supply was surging, and it was an old meter, then water would go through the meter under pressure, then back when the pressure dropped. Every time the pressure increases, the meter reads it as water going through, but when the water pressure drops, the meter doesn't read it, resulting in thousands of gallons on the meter that I never used. In this case, they replaced the meter and added a backflow device. Problem solved.

How much water pressure is at your house? If it's too high, over 80 pounds, the water might be going through your toilet. Ideally, water pressure in a house should be around 60 pounds. If you go much higher then that, the valve in the toilet bowl will leak water through it. That water goes through the toilet and down the drain without you ever knowing it. You wont hear it or see it, but it's ongoing all the time. Usually this adds up to thousands of gallons a month. You need to measure the water pressure at the house. You can get a gauge in the sprinkler department of any home improvement store to that attaches to an outdoor spicket that will tell you how much pressure you have at the house. A house downhill from the supply will increase water pressure from gravity.

Good luck,
Eddie

Hey Eddie,

Our water right now just runs to a hose fitting and shutoff valve in the basement. No plumbing inside the house has been run yet. With the line pressurised and shut off at the house the meter continues to slowly run. At 14 gallons a day you have to check it after a few hours since you can't see it move with the naked eye.

Our water line is roughly 5,000 feet. We ran the first section of 3,500 feet a couple of years ago when we did the road work. The new 1,500 foot section was just ran and is the section in this thread. I know we have a leak because I removed a section of pipe where the old line meets new and attached a short piece of pipe with a shutoff valve. After shutting of the water at the valve the meter no longer showed a leak. This tells me that the first 3,500 feet of line is good.

Today I replaced that section of pipe and move half way to the house and did the same thing twice, cutting my possible leaky section to about 375 feet. I'll probably do this one more time tomorrow morning and should get me down to a section of less than 200 feet. From there I'll start digging with the excavator until I hit water or mud. If all goes as planned I should have a sound water line by tomorrow.

Jeremy

 

[jk96]

After a lot of digging our line is fixed and holding now. I ended up isolating the leak to a 200' section and then dug out and replaced this section. I ended up finding the leak with about 40' to go. It looked like either the arm of the trencher raised up a bit in this section or a lot of dirt caved in underneath the pipe when we dropped it in. Since the pipe wasn't laying flat at the connection it caused a bind and small leak at the gasket.

Edit - forgot to mention that we have an elevation rise from the meter of about 160 feet. I ran a pressure gauge this afternoon and we ended up with 46 psi at the house. Considering the elevation increase and friction loss of 5,000 feet of line I was pretty happy with that. Should be more than enough, especially given that our line up to the house is 2".

 

[EddieWalker]

Awesome job finding it. That can be extremely frustrating, especially if you never figure out exactly what the cause was for the leak.

When I put my line in, I forgot about how big a deal them made about making sure I had a flat bottom in the trench. The water district made me smooth it out before giving me to OK to install the pipe. That was so painful of an experience during the heat of summer that I must have blocked it from my memory!!

Eddie

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

I think my contractor put a 1" layer of sand in the trench to smooth it out.

 

[LarryD]

When I ran 700' of waterline at my property, I piled dirt on the line about every 20' or so and then pressurized. The next day I walked it looking for wet spots.
Be sure to pressurize the lines in the house before covering them.

I sure do like the photo story you're providing.

 

[jk96]

When I ran 700' of waterline at my property, I piled dirt on the line about every 20' or so and then pressurized. The next day I walked it looking for wet spots.
Be sure to pressurize the lines in the house before covering them.

I sure do like the photo story you're providing.

Thanks Larry,

I've been slacking on pictures lately. We've had a lot going on and several things seem to be coming together at once which is good but also a bit hectic. Our septic has been installed, all I have is a poor cell phone pic below. My youngest boy who is 5 thought it was pretty cool to trace the path the toilets would take out to the field. All of the framing with the exception of the basement stairs is complete. Roofing is starting tomorrow along with doors and windows. One thing I didn't anticipate was the difficulty of picking colors for shingles.

Rough in for H-Vac should start this week and we have a better idea of plans for it now. We are using geo-thermal. The house will have two units, one in the garage and one on the north end of the home. We will have a total of 6 zones. After doing some research I also found out that our electric utility provides a $750 per ton rebate for geothermal. There is also a 30% federal tax credit for the cost of the system which will really help.

Steps on the front and back of the house should be poured this week. I'm hoping the patios will be poured by next week. We started roughing in electrical as well. I have a family member who is an electrician that is helping me with it. We dug and buried the conduit for the service run from the transformer to the house today and started hanging can lights as well as figuring out outlet and switch locations.

 

[EddieWalker]

Is this the line from the house to the tank? What size is it?

Are you going with asphalt shingles? You really get what you pay for with those, so the extra money for the better quality is money saved in the long run!!!

Eddie

 

[KRBrouwer]

Have you considered metal instead of shingles. I replaced our entire roof with metal and am very happy with it, especially how much cooler it makes the attic in the summer.

Ken

 

[jk96]

Is this the line from the house to the tank? What size is it?

Are you going with asphalt shingles? You really get what you pay for with those, so the extra money for the better quality is money saved in the long run!!!

Eddie

Yes, that is the waste line from the house to the septic. I didn't measure to be honest. I know it was pretty substantial and if I had to guess I would say it was a 5" line, however 5" is not real common so it is probably a 4" line. I do know it was sized based on our number of fixtures, showers, etc.

As far as the roof we are going with asphalt. We are using certainteed 50 year shingles.

Have you considered metal instead of shingles. I replaced our entire roof with metal and am very happy with it, especially how much cooler it makes the attic in the summer.

Ken

Ken I would have liked to do metal however it just wasn't in the budget. We've got a really difficult roof with 5 dormers, 4 porches or overhangs, and 4400 sq/ft. of total roof. Pitches are mostly 8/12 or 10/12. I think we have a total of 14 valleys. When time comes to replace our roof we will probably do metal at that time. Hopefully it will be long into the future.

Windows and doors showed up today. The crew was able to get about 1/2 of them installed today. I'll try to get some pics tomorrow at the end of the day.