Recently, the main water pipe to my house sprung a leak in my front yard. The pipe was PVC and buried about 3 feet deep--I live in Arizona, so freezing isn't usually a problem. I had the plumber replace the PVC with copper--my house has copper pipes, but the main line from the street was mostly PVC. About a week or two before the leak, I had removed the tar paper from under the rock in the front yard. The paper was getting annoying--showing through the rock and getting torn, so I took it out. Now someone is telling me that the tar paper could have been insulating the PVC from the cold, and by removing it, I "sped up" the leak.
Is this possible? The tar paper was under an inch or two of rock and the pipe was buried 3 feet. It does get cold out here, but it hasn't frozen--especially not 3 feet deep. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks