main water line to house keeps breaking - DIY Chatroom

whalens · 05-31-2009, 02:04 AM

My house is in CA and was built in 1992. The water line from the street to the house was/is PVC. The original line was Schedule 80 in the white non-fliexible type. It broke many times in the last 13 years during both summer and winter. I replaced it about 16 months ago with the Schedule 80 flexible grey color PVC and we buried it about 2 feet down. Now I have a leak again. I have checked the water pressure and it's at 70psi. The house is all PVC piping and none of the interior piping has had a leak. Does anyone have any idea why I might be having re-occuring problems?

Mike Swearingen · 05-31-2009, 03:12 AM

Is it possibly buried in rocky ground? Any vehicle traffic over it?

al's sewer · 05-31-2009, 11:00 AM

replace it with k soft copper tubing and bed it in sand. its going to be costly but at least you won't be fixing it every couple months.

majakdragon · 05-31-2009, 12:17 PM

I assume you haven't noticed an obvious reason for the breakage, such as a dip in the soil near the break or rocks in the trench. I agree with using soft copper. Any ground movement will have an effect on solid piping that cannot "give" a bit. Your yard may suffer from "shear" effect where it moves in two directions at the same time.

whalens · 05-31-2009, 05:54 PM

Did the dig today and found the problem to be a coupler not the flexible PVC. The coupler was under a sideways stress due to the straight lines of PVC not lining up well at the joint and the joint had to take the stress of the change in direction. Repair was made with a new joint and straightening out the run. So far no problems and with the Lord's help I won't have any more problems with this line again.