Pipe burst problems - advice needed

[Mike Gibbons]

Hi, I need to pick brains about leak prevention or control.

Much of the pipework in my house is over 10 years old. In the five years I have lived here I have had three pipe bursts. The failures have been in J Guest push on fittings. The nut part has split on each occasion. Luckily we have been in the house on each occasion but that has not prevented some expensive repair bills. So I am considering what I could do to help with future problems. I have a leakbot fitted but it does not respond to a sudden burst - to the leakbot that looks like a tap being turned on.

I see various systems for remote turning off the supply - does anyone have any experience of these things? Or maybe there is another approach?

Thanks in anticipation for any advice.

Mike

[Harry Bloomfield Esq]

Mike Gibbons explained :

There is - replace with copper pipes.

[Tim Lamb]

In message [e-mail], Mike Gibbons [e-mail] writes

We get fairly wide mains pressure variations here. Being new to pressurised house plumbing and with an installed thermal store, I fitted a mains pressure regulator.

As has been said, copper pipework is reliable if not convenient for builders.

[Tricky Dicky]

I have to agree about copper piping although there is quite a variety in the quality of push on joints for plastic pipes so maybe you were just unlucky with the quality used. As far as switching off the mains I can recommend Surestop devices ours just requires a flick of a conveniently placed switch for instant turn off. I do believe they do one that can be switched with an app.

Richard

[Tim+]

Given how young the fittings are, I suspect fitter error. I?ll wager he/she has wellied them up with a pair of pipe wrenches like compression fittings which is unnecessary. They shouldn?t be failing anything like this soon.

I?m not sure there?s a good solution to preventing an unpredictable plumbing failure of variable degree other than good house insurance.

You *could* go round replacing fittings but that would probably be difficult and disruptive.

Personally, I?d check the fittings that I could get too easily and inspect them for tool marks indicating over-tightening, and replace those if required. I?d also check my house insurance policy.

Tim

[Theo]

+1 Plastic is supposed to last a long time, so something sounds wrong.

As far as mitigating leaks go, I suppose it depends what you want. I have one of these Aqara leak detectors ($15 from China, more on Amazon):

my Home Assistant Zigbee setup - it's configured to send me a phone alert if a leak is detected. It could equally be configured to close a valve to turn off the water supply automatically, with a suitable valve (maybe a

2-port central heating valve controlled by a relay? Would that hold the pressure?)

Perhaps you could scatter leak detectors in places where a leak might go, and set that any detected leak kills the supply? You might need this both for the mains and any cold water tank.

Theo

[Steve Walker]

You can put compression fittings on plastic pipes, as long as you also use pipe inserts.

[RJH]

I'd be inclined to look harder at preventing it happening than curing the consequence. IME the Guest stuff is pretty good - I've not expereinced a failure in 10 or so years if that's any measure.

The 'nut split' is something I can't imagine. The nut is only hand tightened to a well defined stop. Cheaper clones don't even have the nut. Strikes me that the fitting was tightened with a spanner, and that in some way distorted the whole fitting causing early failure. Maybe take a look at a couple of other fittings and see how tightly they're screwed up (as it were)?

[Andrew]

There was a period when copper pipework was failing due to pinhole leaks. This was decades back when the copper price was high and the quality of pipes (with badly recycled copper) dubious.

Unfortunately this occurred when lagged (or not) copper pipes were buried in ground floor screed. My 1976 house has ground floor pipework like this but so far hasn't failed.

[charles]

I had one of those. Installation in the late 70s/early 80s.

I have one room like this - an extension built mid 70s. I made my extension (prvious hose, early 70s) with a suspended floor to match the rest of the house.

[alan_m]

I replaced all the lead pipe in my house with copper in the late 1970s or early 1980s.

A couple of years back I heard a faint hissing sound from somewhere in my hallway. Eventually it was traced to a pin hole in the water pipe with a fine spray of water exiting. Luckily it was under a suspended floor and relatively easy to cut out and replace. The pin hole had directed the water downwards rather than upwards towards the floorboards

On examination of the faulty pipe there was an small area around the leak that had gone rusty.

[Andrew]

For modern construction methods using iBeams (that cannot be notched), using copper pipe for first floor rads, cylinder, baths etc is rather tricky if not almost impossible without resorting to short lengths fed through the iBeams and soldered back together for the longer runs. Either that or very careful planning of pipe runs would be needed. Ground floor could still go in the screed which I think they still use on top of beam+block flooring.

[Andrew]

elaborate on 'rusty' though. Copper is non-ferrous, unless there was a contaminating metal in the liquid copper used to draw the tubing.

did you take a closer look at the leak ?. It might have been where aggressive flux was not cleaned off after soldering.

[alan_m]

I assumed contamination

[Dave Plowman (News]

Quite. ;-)

[Dave Plowman (News]

There was a period of copper shortages where pretty low grade stuff was sold by some. Lots of impurities. Price varied widely - and I'd guess some went for the cheapest.

[Tim Lamb]

In message [e-mail]>, "Dave Plowman (News)" [e-mail]> writes

I re-plumbed our first house around 1970. Used 15mm stainless and compression fittings.

>

[Mike Gibbons]

Thanks for all the replies. Looking at the failed junction I can't see any evidence of tools being used. It looks well aligned with the pipes pushed well into the joint. Replacement would mean a lot of floors up so I don't fancy that but I willl look at it next time I decorate. The problems have all been in the ground floor ceiling. I've put a vent in the ceiling where the recent burst occurred so if there is another problem there the water should come through the vent rather than bringing the ceiling down.

Thinking of remote shut off valves. Something with a switch near the front door sounds like a good idea. We're more likely to use that than an app every time we go out. I will check the ones people have mentioned. Does anyone else have experience of such valves? I prefer to go for a better system rather than false economy of a lower quality one - is there a known "best" manufacturer. A plumber mentioned to me that the remote valves can cause pressure shocks because of their on/off nature which can in itself damage joints over time. I suppose that is a risk trade off that I would have to accept. At least I should be present if such a failure occured.

Mike

[Tim+]

Can be a bit of a bastard though. Olives can?t really get a good ?bite? as it?s so hard. Problematic if you have really high water pressure.

Tim

[Tim+]

I had. Surestop switch for a while but I used to get a really scary bang though the pipes when shutting it off so I ended up removing it. Much later I discovered a huge air-filled dead leg in our pipework which may well have been the cause of the problem but I never got around to refitting it.

Tim