Copper pitting.
jlcnet.com
Excerpts:
"The copper pipes get green spots, and then they just start dripping," says Hoffman. "We’ve had to repair pipes in hundreds of houses. In a lot of houses that are less than ten years old, we have had to replace all the pipes in the house.
…corroding copper tubing has recently been reported in cities as far apart as Phoenix, Ariz. and Andover, Mass. Other cities reporting problems with pinhole leaks in copper include Saugus, Calif., Lima, Ohio, and Jacksonville, Fla. In Jacksonville, the problems were so serious that the city, in an unprecedented step, banned the use of copper for residential water supply piping.
Jim Edwards, an estimator with W. J. Maloney Plumbing Co. in Phoenix, has had first-hand experience with copper corrosion. A leak in the copper tubing under the slab in Edwards’ own home cost $7,800 to dig up and repair, and he believes that aggressive soil was responsible. "If the house happens to be in a certain area, the pipe will just eat away," said Edwards, who reports that problem soil is found throughout Maricopa County in Arizona.
Garry Gage, owner of Garry Gage Plumbing in Rialto, Calif., has seen many failures of buried copper tubing in his region, so he takes a conservative approach. "When doing new construction, my company won’t put copper pipes in the ground," says Gage. |
