Copper pitting

DanHolohan

This is the third time we've had this happen in our house during the past four years or so. Something wacky is going on with the water here on Long Island. It's always in a domestic hot water line. Also, it's not affecting the piping installed in 1950. It's going after the copper installed during the past 25 years. I'm reading up on manganese dioxide.

Glen_7

I live in Huntington and have seen this in my home.

hot_rod

Maybe contact the CDA, they usually have a good handle on copper issues causes and prevention.

Or take the tube and water sample to an analytical lab.

www.copper.org

DanHolohan

Thanks, H.R. We're having some problems with our water right now because of what Grumman put into the ground during WWII. The folks in charge at the Water District are doing a lot of things to the water to make it safe. The timing of their efforts and the pitting seem to coincide, and if that's the problem it looks like we have a choice between leaky pipes or getting very sick.

They recently shut a well very close to our house because of radium. Grumman built a lot of the fighter planes and they all had instruments that glowed. It's our turn to glow. ;-)

Here's more of our story.

Docfletcher

Indulge me... What is your hot water temp set at?

DanHolohan

140 F.

Docfletcher

I mean for the service temp at the fixture. Sorry, I was not clear on that.

DanHolohan

140. We temper it there.

Docfletcher

Based upon what I've read so far... That type of corrosion happens mostly hot water the lines because it is more aggressive. They speak of it here...

http://www.plumbingengineer.com/aug_12/designers.php

DanHolohan

Thanks. We've had it happen twice in the same place on the same pipe. The most recent being yesterday. It's a 3/4" line that goes from an Ergomax indirect to a bathroom. The total run is about 25 feet. The tubing is pitting in a straight run, three feet away from the nearest elbow on either side. Our water pressure isn't excessive and I don't think this is erosion/corrosion. I think it may be the current water chemistry because of the plume.

Love to hear from anyone else in the Bethpage area who is getting paranoid.

JohnNY

Hey Dan,
Enough with the suburb crap. Move to the city already.
Sincerely,
Me.

Docfletcher

Somewhat rare in straight runs. Do you mean a bio plume? How odd that it would be the same place.

Not sure if this applies but in Santa Fe they speak of biological infiltration's...

file:///C:/Users/Donald/Downloads/materials-07-04321%20(2).pdf

DanHolohan

Docfletcher said:

Somewhat rare in straight runs. Do you mean a bio plume? How odd that it would be the same place.

Not sure if this applies but in Santa Fe they speak of biological infiltration's...

file:///C:/Users/Donald/Downloads/materials-07-04321%20(2).pdf

It's not bio; it's chemical, and very toxic. It's also huge and expanding. We get all our water from the ground and there's also concern that the chemicals are moving up into the air.

DanHolohan

JohnNY said:

Hey Dan,
Enough with the suburb crap. Move to the city already.
Sincerely,
Me.

I'm thinking Maui.

Docfletcher

Chemical crap. That's horrid to be sure. But if chemical I wonder why it don't effect the whole pipe system.

Paul Pollets

Time for a Pex re-pipe! I'd be interested to know pH and conductivity...

jonny88

This is a very interesting one and happens in certain areas of Long Island.When customers ask it is hard to give a definite answer,I have heard excuses from improperly grounded electrical services to bad batches of copper.Grumman sounds scary so how safe is the water we are drinking.I never came across this in the city.(plumbers protect the health of the nation),hopefully a definite answer is provided.I also heard from a plumber in Ireland that they are not using pex on domestic lines anymore for health reasons.On that note what kind of testing is done on a Poland Spring bottle of water.Think I will stick with the Guinness.

icesailor

FWIW,

I've seen the same problem for years and the Grumman plant is a long way away. The Island of Long is a sole source aquifer. Usually with a low PH or slightly acidic. The acidity comes from CO2, from rotting vegetation like pine needles. I saw it more on well water and well water with high conductivity. Where I lived, sodium levels over 20 Mg/Liter were the rule. Higher Sodium levels could go along with but not always. What I always found was this. The manufacture of the tubing was mixed. Where I worked, a plumber might buy 10,000 feet of mixed copper tube to get a good price. Then, they might buy more before they ran out of tubing. So, you could do a job and use copper by 3 or more manufacturers. There could be a job that had religious tubing. Always on the hot, and in a particular house, only one brand would have holes in it. Usually, multiple leaks in one length. If you sand off the side of the pipe on that particular plane (say the hole was at 6 O'clock. all holes would be in a line at 6 O'clock. If you sanded along the bottom of the pipe, you could see other places that looked like they would leak soon. And would. The Tube was installed in the 1980's. Sometimes I heard or saw tube that was later. I don't ever think I saw any that was really old. I don't know how copper tube is made, but it is drawn somehow through a mandrel. It starts out flat. Somehow, it is joined, like electrical steel HW conduit. It is joined at a "Skelp". When people try to use electrical conduit or conduit nipples, they often leak along the skelp. It seemed like the copper tube had a skelp and it was fouled from foreign substances or just not properly joined. One of my pet causes is some sort of grounding issue. The Island of Long is sand. A really bad place for house and transmission grounds. Same as where I lived. Then, throw in unbalanced transmission loads and bad neutrals. The pitting looks like a form of electrolysis.

Then, there's all that blown around aerosol salt (sodium chloride). It isn't coming in from under the ground, it comes from the winter wind. All of LI Water is well water. As far as I know, there are no reservoirs. I don't know what the LI water dome/lens is, but the water in the ground is higher than sea level. Have the municipal water service providers been drilling new deep wells to try to get away from the Grumman waste contaminants? If they are trying new wells, and going very deep to glacial shells, they get ancient water with no contamination. But the PH goes way up from the calcium in the shells. Where I worked, they had shallow suction wells for over a hundred years. Recently, they put some 150' deep high yield wells. Before I left, I was starting to see all kinds of unusual things happening. When I brought them up, I was a @$$hat. Of course. But one of my accounts had a brewery and distillery. The change in water chemistry created havoc with his production. But that's another story.

Look around on the tube. See if all the leaks are on one brand of tube and none on another brand.

FWIW:

Zman

I saw one like this in a home that was served by a small subdivision water district. It was the same thing, only horizontal pipes. Everywhere there was a pinhole there was a small cyst on the inside of the pipe. It looked like sediment came to rest in an area of low turbulance and started eating the pipe.
Do you have any pics of the inside of the pipe?
Makes me think that something in the water is reacting with pockets of impurity in some of the copper pipe.
I believe this district was treating high sulfer levels with hydrogen peroxide. I wish I paid more attention in chemistry class.

Keep us posted.

Carl

Gordy

http://www.wsscwater.com/home/jsp/content/copperpipewp.faces

vaporvac

Fascinating! I recently asked about this in the Plumbing section as I'm experiencing the same, and only in my hot lines which makes sense, I guess. Jamie Hall replied he has the same thing, too. We're in completely different parts of the country. What is the solution?

icesailor

I think it all has to do with the conductivity and chemistry of the water. Its like the FM box in your car that provides power. It is filled with a water/acid mixture with metal plates. A current (electrons) flows between plates and you get electricity. After a while. all the lead on the plates is depleted. When the lead on the plates is depleted enough, it rises up and shorts out the path between plates. Then, it's time for another FM Box.

Or like the steel fishing boat, tied up next to a steel sheathed wharf, and some arc welding is done. The ground clamp is connected to the closest place next to the dock. The rod end is taken to the farthest place on the boat to weld. The boat makes the completed connection. But if the path of least resistance is through the hull, across the salt water, into the steel sheathing, and back across the parking lot to the welder on the truck, it will slice a line at the water line of the steel boat and the boat might sink at the dock. Be warned. Its best to connect the ground or negative clamp when arc welding as close to your work as you can.

The pitting I saw was some where, but not everywhere. I also noticed that some houses had worse issues of "de-zincification" where the zinc binder left the brass and the brass became soft. And Bibb screw heads were breaking off if you tried to change a washer. Or the threads of Non-Rising stems on gate valves would strip of their threads.

But those "Cysts" on the inside of the pipe were a sure sign if you cut out a bad spot. Funny thing was that unless you took the whole pipe out, another one would appear if you didn't.

I'm thinking I remember that before I left, and the water supplier had gone to these very deep wells with the high PH (8.2+) I was starting to notice a lot of de-zincification where I hadn't seen it before. They liked the high PH because it was supposed to help stop lead leachate from all the old lead in their systems. They had been adding some chemical to their water anyway. And with all the new gas connections to houses being done with PE pipe, same with water services, you eliminate another potential source for a good neutral/ground for the house.

kcopp

vaporvac said:

Fascinating! I recently asked about this in the Plumbing section as I'm experiencing the same, and only in my hot lines which makes sense, I guess. Jamie Hall replied he has the same thing, too. We're in completely different parts of the country. What is the solution?

I guess that makes me wonder what type of water heater you folks are using and if it has an anode rod in it that is reacting w/ the water...?

icesailor

"" I guess that makes me wonder what type of water heater you folks are using and if it has an anode rod in it that is reacting w/ the water...? ""

The first houses I saw it in all had hot water oil boilers with tankless heaters. No magnesium anode rods. Its a water chemistry/conductivity problem.

DanHolohan

kcopp said:

vaporvac said:

Fascinating! I recently asked about this in the Plumbing section as I'm experiencing the same, and only in my hot lines which makes sense, I guess. Jamie Hall replied he has the same thing, too. We're in completely different parts of the country. What is the solution?

I guess that makes me wonder what type of water heater you folks are using and if it has an anode rod in it that is reacting w/ the water...?

We have an Ergomax indirect. It's the early one, about 20 years old. Nowadays, they call it Turbomax. Thanks.

Docfletcher

How about your immediate neighbors, are they having the same problem now or in the past?

Here is an excerpt from Texas A&M referencing two tests for corrosive impurities in water...

Although you probably won't sent water to Texas for testing perhaps you can find a lab that will perform these tests in your area.

TWO common tests can determine if water is
like y to be corrosive: the Langelier Saturation
Index (LSI) and the Ryzner Stability Index
In order to the LSI, a laboratory must
measure pH, e ectrical conductivity, total
dissolved solids, alkalinity, and total hardness.
The LSI is typically negative or positive and
only rarely zero. Negative values predict that the
water is more likely to be corrosive. Potentially
corrosive water typically has an LSI value —I
(mild' to —5
When the RSI is used, a value over 6.5
indicates that the water is probably corrosive;
higher values are increasingly corrosive.
Not all laboratories Offer the saturation or
stability index. Contact the laboratory to discuss
their services, pricing, and procedures for
collecting, handling, and submitting samples. The
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
maintains a list Of laboratories certified to test
drinking water:

Danny Scully

140 is a little dangerous Dan, no?

Brian Chilton_2

corrosion is a chemical reaction.

the old rule of thumb for rate of chemical reactions is reaction rate doubles with every 10 degree increase in temp.
thus the reason for hot water lines.


i guess we will have to wait and see if the cold water lines corrode in 600 or 700 years!

sounds like the water is a better electrolyte than it used to be.

scary.

I grew up in smithtown. i hope the water is not unhealthy, but it does not sound good....

DanHolohan

It's an excercise in Mindfulness, Danny. Keeps us young.

icesailor

Be mindful of what I said, if it is relevant. I never say it in every house, just a select few. I never saw it in every pipe in a house, only hot water pipes. I never saw it in every hot water pipe, it seemed to be in certain pipes from a single manufacturer. I always found that the tube was mixed, never all the copper was from one manufacturer. I don't think I ever saw it in more than one section of tube, ot variants of a single piece. That's why I thought it had something to do with the manufacturing of the pipe. I'm remembering the last time I saw it a few years ago, it was in a development next to an old active farm. The PH was very low but so was nitrates/nitrogen from all the fertilizer that had been put on the fields.

Its not like black mold staining on roof shingles. And they were all 10 to 20 years old.

DanHolohan

icesailor said:

Be mindful of what I said, if it is relevant. I never say it in every house, just a select few. I never saw it in every pipe in a house, only hot water pipes. I never saw it in every hot water pipe, it seemed to be in certain pipes from a single manufacturer. I always found that the tube was mixed, never all the copper was from one manufacturer. I don't think I ever saw it in more than one section of tube, ot variants of a single piece. That's why I thought it had something to do with the manufacturing of the pipe. I'm remembering the last time I saw it a few years ago, it was in a development next to an old active farm. The PH was very low but so was nitrates/nitrogen from all the fertilizer that had been put on the fields.

Its not like black mold staining on roof shingles. And they were all 10 to 20 years old.

Yes, taking that to heart. Thanks. You're describing exactly what's happening.

Paul48

Over the years, I've seen folks post about this many times. I've read the studies, and seen the reports that state it's the presence of a couple different factors. In many many of those cases, people had ancient copper pipes in the home for years, and had no ill-effect to that piping. The new additions seem to have constant problems, though. The industry needs to be looking at that fact.

Docfletcher

The EPA has a corrosion manual for drinking water. Perhaps you can check it out.

http://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyNET.exe/10003FIW.txt?ZyActionD=ZyDocument&Client=EPA&Index=1981 Thru 1985&Docs=&Query=&Time=&EndTime=&SearchMethod=1&TocRestrict=n&Toc=&TocEntry=&QField=&QFieldYear=&QFieldMonth=&QFieldDay=&UseQField=&IntQFieldOp=0&ExtQFieldOp=0&XmlQuery=&File=D:\ZYFILES\INDEX DATA\81THRU85\TXT\00000001\10003FIW.txt&User=ANONYMOUS&Password=anonymous&SortMethod=h|-&MaximumDocuments=1&FuzzyDegree=0&ImageQuality=r75g8/r75g8/x150y150g16/i425&Display=p|f&DefSeekPage=x&SearchBack=ZyActionL&Back=ZyActionS&BackDesc=Results page&MaximumPages=1&ZyEntry=1

Paul48

Sorry.......That's like reading a doctoral thesis on the causes of flat tires. Does it address the fact that older copper pipe is not affected, and why? There is plenty of evidence to be had. We can test the makeup of the old copper vs. the new. I have heard of large areas in Florida, for instance, where they cannot use copper, for this reason.

Docfletcher

I don't know what it says... It's appears at first blush to be an obtuse difficult read. Only one who is motivated would take it on.

Paul48

When they repeated the same thing a couple times on the first page, I was done. There are much better motivations for a Friday. I plan on working one arm til it's sore. Then, I might switch off. Just for symetry, of course.

Docfletcher

I may give it a go latter on, just for grins of course.

Charlie from wmass

Is the system bonded? I have a customer in my hometown of Lee that had that until I removed the electric water heater that kept rotting out one day out of warranty, like clock work. Tank is gone and the hot water pipe no longer rot out. I always thought it was a grounding issue that was oveelooked.

vaporvac

That's an interesting thought, charlie. I have a gas water heater, and now realize the pitting is on my cold lines, as well. Here's what Jamie Hall had to say when I posted this issue in the plumbing section:

Jamie Hall said:

vaporvac said:

On a related note, I recently had some galvanized piping replaced due to a leaky connection; I decided to go copper and almost needn't have bothered because the galvanized was perfectly clean. Some of my copper runs, however, have developed pinhole leaks. What causes that?

On the copper: check the pH of your water. If it is low, it is surprising how fast copper can corrode -- from the inside, which is a pain. In my area this can be a real problem; I have seen some wells down around a pH of 3, but with no buffer capacity so one doesn't really notice it when the water is in use. What you might see is a faint (or sometimes not so faint!) green or green-blue colour to a reasonably deep bath, or if you have a very slowly dripping faucet you may get a green stain on the fixture. The colour is from the copper... corroding from the inside of the pipe...

Treatment is not difficult. It involves passing the water coming into the house through a bed of marble chips or dolomite. Any decent water treatment company can help.

DanHolohan

Docfletcher said:

How about your immediate neighbors, are they having the same problem now or in the past?

Here is an excerpt from Texas A&M referencing two tests for corrosive impurities in water...

Although you probably won't sent water to Texas for testing perhaps you can find a lab that will perform these tests in your area.

TWO common tests can determine if water is
like y to be corrosive: the Langelier Saturation
Index (LSI) and the Ryzner Stability Index
In order to the LSI, a laboratory must
measure pH, e ectrical conductivity, total
dissolved solids, alkalinity, and total hardness.
The LSI is typically negative or positive and
only rarely zero. Negative values predict that the
water is more likely to be corrosive. Potentially
corrosive water typically has an LSI value —I
(mild' to —5
When the RSI is used, a value over 6.5
indicates that the water is probably corrosive;
higher values are increasingly corrosive.
Not all laboratories Offer the saturation or
stability index. Contact the laboratory to discuss
their services, pricing, and procedures for
collecting, handling, and submitting samples. The
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
maintains a list Of laboratories certified to test
drinking water:

Nothing from the nearby neighbors. Thanks.

icesailor

My best way of telling is the taste of the first draw of cold water in the morning. If it makes you want to throw up, the PH is really low because of copper in the water. Another way is if you are a pure coffee drinker, drink quality coffee, black with no sugar, if it tastes fine in the AM, the water os palatable. Make the same pot of coffee with bottled water like Poland Springs. If the coffee tastes better, your water clucks. If you have green stains in the tub or shower, you have a low PH.