LONG Water Line Question

[midlf]

consider yourself lucky. Around here water lines are buried in excess of 4' deep.

 

[ByronBob]

Don forgive me but why didn't you go with a roll of polyethylene line with maybe 1 splice in it?

 

[memenzel]

My line is the same pipe 2" sdr-21. 6000 feet from meter to my house. Recieved water bill Jan 8 ,used 2.4 million gallons!!! A leak for sure, 20 gallon per minute for two months. Took two days to find leak due to extreme digging conditions. What I did was cut the line and installed a temporary valve, pressurize the line. Then you will know what side of the valve the leak is on. Remove the valve, put a block of wood on cut end of line and hit it with a hammer. This will tightened up any loose joints. In the last 17 years I have added 4 feet to my line. Use 2 repair couplings and a piece of pipe to fill the gap. Repessurize the line and see what happens.

Mike

 

[woodchuckie]

I laid almost a mile of 2" pipe. Because my supplier didn't have enough of either kind, the glue joint and the gasket type, I have half of each. I've had one leak in over twenty years and it was a glue joint. It probably had set up too much preventing me from pushing the joints far enough together. The dirt on the pipe keeps it from working apart. It will come apart without the dirt.

 

[3RRL]

DUMBDOG,
</font><font color="blue" class="small">( It will be in the last place that you look....Guess it did not make a lot sense to me then or now.)</font>
....There's no reason to continue looking once you found it. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
Moms are always smarter than kids...

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

Don, the fact that we had a decent shower last saturday is not helping look for "wet" dirt. My waterline is about 600 feet long with the same type of pipe used. I originally watched the meter a few times to see how much it moved. It seemed to coincide with demand and I haven't checked it since.

I recommend 2 ways to look at/for it.
1)Wait for the ground to dry out 1st to help look for it. Which, if it doesn't dry up(due to rain), you can singlehandedly claim responsibility for ending the drought.
2) At least you got the sendero cleared out!

I'd be afraid of hitting the pipe with the sharpshooter and creating another leak with my luck.

I'd put a backflow preventer in place close to the meter, then give it some time so you can collect some data on total usage.

If it is leaking in the black gumbo dirt, you'll have a mud puddle because water doesn't penetrate gumbo hardly at all. You'll have a mud puddle as wide as the trench and it will try to fill the trench in both directions.

PS. I can see why you'd want to clear up this matter before the real heat sets in...good luck...Kyle

 

[turnkey4099]

Ah so. I knew about their use on large water mains. Didn't know they existed for small diameter pipe.

Harry K

 

[turnkey4099]

Or you can do what I did. I bought this place in the spring and in middle summer the 1/4 mile line to the community well sprung a leak. I trenched and laid a new line bypassing all but 150 ft. Glad I did as about 5 or 6 years later that section also sprung a leak. In digging it up and replacing it I found that it was galvanized so eaten up with corrosion you could shove a nail through it. I figured it was lot easier to replace the line than to dig looking for a leak.

Harry K

 

[txdon]

Egon, this looks like a good place for a midpoint cut off valve.

Don't ask. /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

At least I had water back on by midnight.

I'm tired.

Thanks everyone for all the good suggestions, I'll re-read them again tomorrow and decide which way to proceed.

 

[Egon]

Good to hear you are making progress. That sure is a nice looking machine you have sitting there. My Litlle orange B7100 is thinking it needs a Big Brother!

If the sizing and volume capabilities are in the proper range you could pull a linner pipe.

Egon /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif