Water lines
- Thread starter koziol41
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EddieWalker
Epic Contributor
There's all sorts of ways a line can burst. Most of the time it's just a crack as the surrounding dirt holds it all together. If this happens, you should still get water in the house, but your preasure will be less. The bigger the leak, the less the preasure. I had a house with over 100 pounds of preasure at the house and so many leaks in the line that I had to replace the entire line, but that was a disaster from the beginning and done on the cheap by the builder.
Is it city water? If you can test a neighbors water preasure to see what normal is, you can then test yours to see if there is a difference. If your on a well, then you should know what your preasure is at the well. Turn off the water at the house and see if the preasure drops.
Don't be suprissed if you can't see the water on the surface if the line has a break in it. Allot of the time the water will follow the pipe for a distance before surfacing. Soemtimes it never surfaces.
Finding the leak can be very, very dificult. Pushing a probe into the ground along the line might work. It allows the water an easy path to travel and will come out the hole. Or you will find a soft spot just under the surface. If that doesn't work, then you dig it up half way, cut it, cap both ends and figure out what side is leaking. Do that again and again until you find the leak.
Sometimes it's easier to just replace the entire line. In the case I mentioned earlier, thin wall was installed. I tried to find the leak for about a week without any results. I gave up and just put in a new line. 1,200 feet of it!!!
Eddie
Is it city water? If you can test a neighbors water preasure to see what normal is, you can then test yours to see if there is a difference. If your on a well, then you should know what your preasure is at the well. Turn off the water at the house and see if the preasure drops.
Don't be suprissed if you can't see the water on the surface if the line has a break in it. Allot of the time the water will follow the pipe for a distance before surfacing. Soemtimes it never surfaces.
Finding the leak can be very, very dificult. Pushing a probe into the ground along the line might work. It allows the water an easy path to travel and will come out the hole. Or you will find a soft spot just under the surface. If that doesn't work, then you dig it up half way, cut it, cap both ends and figure out what side is leaking. Do that again and again until you find the leak.
Sometimes it's easier to just replace the entire line. In the case I mentioned earlier, thin wall was installed. I tried to find the leak for about a week without any results. I gave up and just put in a new line. 1,200 feet of it!!!
Eddie
Thanks for the info.The lines are in our barn they are for automatic horse drinkers.
Had a proplem with them in early Feb.during that brutal cold spell we had (live in southeasternn wi).Turn them on this saturday and they worked fine water pressure the same.I was keeping my fingers crossed that the line did not burst will try turning off the well and check the pressure.
Had a proplem with them in early Feb.during that brutal cold spell we had (live in southeasternn wi).Turn them on this saturday and they worked fine water pressure the same.I was keeping my fingers crossed that the line did not burst will try turning off the well and check the pressure.
turnkey4099
Elite Member
koziol41 said:
It is unlikely that a line buried 5' would freeze. I know Wi has some brutal weather though.
Harry K
Diesel-ME
Gold Member
Even if they did freeze, usually one uses plastic pipe for stuff like this. It is way more forgiving than copper and should survive a freeze/thaw. So unless you know that it's copper pipe you should be fine.
~paul
~paul
mjarrels
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Brings up an interesting question. When I built 8 years ago, hooked up to county water using copper pipe (county hookup also copper). My sister hooked up a few years later using 200 psi plastic. My concer was 200 psi was not strong enough. County water comes off the main line at 180 psi. I think my copper line is rated at 300 psi. Guy who hooked up my sister thought I was crazy for using copper. Did I just waste $ using copper?
mark
mark
RonMar
Elite Member
5' is pretty deep. Do you have perma frost where you are? I doubt the main line has had any freeze problems. How long is the line? At the coldest time did it stop flowing? If so, I might suspect a freeze at the ends where it goes down into or up out of the ground, but not along the main portion if it is all at 5' below the surface. If you run it for a few minutes and measure the temperature, you can get an idea of what the temp is, and the surrounding ground temp, in the pipe that is buried. You just have to run out enough volume to make sure you are sampling the water from the portion of the pipe that is buried.
Never had a proplem with the main line.Tapped into the well ran a line into the barn about 200' that line line is connected to a brass mainfold with 4 valves each valve has a line going to a supply line up to each drinker.They did stop flowing during that cold spell we had temps 15-20 below zero.Looked like the supply line up to each drinker froze.turned off the main valve in the house saw no drop in pressure.