Pinhole leak...........

[orlymarichal]

Trying to get solution for pinholes leaks in my house cooper pipes........Had 2 pinholes leaks in the past 3 months........how can i prevent this from happening in thje future?...........Please advice.............

[plumber1]

dwv or water pipes?

[master plumber mark]

this is a post I made back in april about copper pipe and
what to do when pin holes develope...
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If you have a recirulatioin pump in your home on the hot water heater,
its wise to turn in off... because the pump has finally started wearing out the copper pipe....
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Now another reson

we run into copper pipe like this all the time...

lots of the times it has to do with the way the electrical system is

GROUNDED to the plumbing system....

now stay with me here.........

if your main ground line to the electrical breaker box has come loose, or has a bad dirty connection, the secondary ground to the copper plumbing system
gets all the power surges, ect going through them...

usually we see this secondary ground clamped across the top of the water heater.

now stay with me here................

if the main water supply comming into the house is plastic, or their are any sort of unions in the cold line like at a water softener that would break the proper gounding of this system, everything in the home tries to ground itself into the water heater.

Whenever we find a water heater that only last about 2 years or so, or the customer states that this is the 5th heater that they have had to install...
its usually got something to do with the way the system is gounded.

it eats the water heaters alive and it breaks down the copper pipe createing
pin holes throughout the system

we have seen older copper as thin as the metal of a beer can
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also you have other variables too, like phone lines grounded to your plumbing system, and cable lines too. Door bell transformers ect....---they are all pumping a slight amount of juice into the system.

we have acutally taken out water heaters to see a small spark happen when
we cut the copper pipes apart on them...

this millli-current in time breaks down the elements in the copper.

I guess you would call it a form of electralisis??

I tell people to call an electrician and get things better grounded in the home.

now isnt that a wonderful theory??

criticism is more than welcome here.


depending on the age of the home, you might be
able to stop it or slow it down dramatically

[plumber1]

A supplier once admitted that they got a load of bad copper.
Usually the steel pipe deteriorates.
I've seen dwv copper go bad too.

[Dunbar Plumbing]

Urine is caustic to copper.....so is food on kitchen sink lines in copper that leave a thinning line at the bottom of pipe. The arm on the closet flange does the same thing since some people urinate 3 to 4 times in a toilet before flushing.....causing the urine to flow out into the line without being thoroughly diluted with a flush. Most with private water systems do this today. GROSS :eek:

[PEW]

If you are talking the supply side, excessively high water pressure can aggravate the situation.

If the leaks are spread apart and on the hot and cold sides you are probably looking at a re-piping. If they are close together and on the hot side, it may be an isolated situation caused by migrating flux from a joint.

Paul

[Kristi]

AND/OR you could also have acidic water!

[Gary Slusser]

I guess there are two of these posts, and I replied to the other before I saw this one. So here's my reply to the other.

There are many causes of pinhole leaks in copper tubing. Some of the most common are: improper reaming when cutting the tubng, excessive flux, agressive water such as water with high DO, CO2, chlorides and sulfate content, acidic low pH water, chlorine, bacteria, and then improper electric ground and/or grounding to copper water lines, dissimilar metals corrosion and hot water recirculation systems etc. and I'm probably forgetting a few.

Call in a water treatment dealer that knows and understands the causes and to do or have a lab do a water analysis to establish causes based on water quality.

Call an electrician in to check the building's ground system and redo any telephone, cable tv etc. grounds.

Gary
Quality Water Associates

[plumguy]

Here type M copper became illegal to install on potable water lines about 15-17 years ago. I'm pretty sure the number one reason was because it it thin wall and there were a lot of problems statewide.

Nothing lasts forever, so depending on the age of you're copper you may want to consider a re-pipe job instead of being nickeled and dimed!