What are the options (preferably less expensive) for "plumbing problems" like leaks in a 30-year old building?
Should a second (or even third?) opinion be obtained before spending $90,000 on pipe replacements?
This would be a 30 yr old, 14 story hi-rise rental prop, right?
What kind of building? Might be easier to blow it down and rebuild.
If it's approved in your area, it's often less expensive to line the existing pipes with blown-in epoxy than to re-plumb the whole building. Generally doesn't require tearing open walls, and if it's a large building (I'd hope so for $90,000), you have a lot less down time and loss of rents.
How do you blow epoxy into all the pipes without plugging up the works??
-- Elbridge Gerry, of Massachusetts:
"What, sir, is the use of militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty. . . Whenever Government means to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise a standing army upon its ruins." -- Debate, U.S. House of Representatives, August 17, 1789
I've seen it at work on big condo buildings, fascinating to watch.
They start with huge air compressors. Remove all the fixtures and cap all the pipes except one circuit at a time. First they run sandblasting grit through the pipes to clean them out -- they can even restore full interior diamter on massively encrusted old galvanized pipe.
Then they blow through the epoxy -- the air flow makes it form a uniform film on the walls of the pipe without plugging anything. You end up with a continuous epoxy coating from one end of the line to the other. They do need to bridge around any valves in the system, of course, so the valves will still work. But that's no big deal, the valves are in an exposed location so it's still a lot simpler than tearing open all the walls.
Besides re-lining to prevent or repair leaks, it also encapsulates and lead in the pipe or solder, so the system has also been used for lead abatement in schools.
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