Repairing a pinhole leak in old black plastic water main.

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chekhonte

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Hi, I'm bother completely new to this forum and new to homeownership.

Yesterday I saw that there was a water leak coming up from under my gravel driveway. I turned off the water at the meter and dug down and found a pinhole leak in old black plastic (polyethylene?) pipe.

Could any of you help in telling me the best method to replace the small section of pipe? I've heard that the compression couplers are that great and are only good for a couple years.

Are there better solutions for this problem?

Also I'm sure this question has been answered a thousand times on this forum and I"m sorry. I tried searching but I just don't know enough of the terminology to search properly. A link to the thread that already answers it would be awesome.

Any help would be great!

Thanks,

Aaron
 

Reach4

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Stainless or brass barbed couplers with 2 stainless worm clamps on each side of each coupler (with the worm screws on opposite sides for adjacent clamps).

If digging, I would put the replacement section in a PVC pipe as a conduit under the driveway for protection. Schedule 80 would be better, but schedule 40 is pretty good. Example: http://www.menards.com/main/search.html?search=schedule+80+pvc I am not a pro.
 

chekhonte

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Stainless or brass barbed couplers with 2 stainless worm clamps on each side of each coupler (with the worm screws on opposite sides for adjacent clamps).

If digging, I would put the replacement section in a PVC pipe as a conduit under the driveway for protection. Schedule 80 would be better, but schedule 40 is pretty good. Example: http://www.menards.com/main/search.html?search=schedule+80+pvc I am not a pro.
Great! Thanks a lot. I'm so glad that this forum and people like you are available to answer questions.
 

Reach4

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I have not done it, but I think you need to heat the poly to get it over the barbs. Boiling water is much safer for the inexperienced person to use for heating the pipe.
 

Craigpump

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Hard to use boiling water in a trench or hole.... A propane torch works great but don't over heat the pipe.

How old is this pipe? Poly pipe made 30, 40 or more yrs ago does not have the same quality as new pipe. Repairing that one place may get you by for a while, but eventually you'll be digging it up and replacing all of it.

We replaced 40 yr old pipe on this job 2 weeks ago.

Like the Fram oil filter ad used to say, pay me now or pay me later.
 

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chekhonte

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thanks everone for your advice. I ended up heating the pipe with boiling water. My wife is a veterinarian and she recommended using hot compresses which worked surprisingly well. What you do it wrap the section of pipe you need to bend in towels rather tightly but you don't need to go nuts with it. Then you just pour hot water from the kettle onto the towels. It worked great the compresses hold in the head surprisingly long and they only need to be on there for about 45 seconds to a minute. The rigid pipe that I couldn't get near to sticking the barbed rib connector in and was rather inflexible (or at least I was worried as hell of cracking it) went to acceptably flexible and with a little work I was able to get 90 percent of both ends of the barbed coupler in the pipe with out needing to hit it with a rubber hammer. I placed about a 4 foot length of schedule 40 pipe around the repair like When I turned the water back on, no leaks at all. I kept it running for 45 minutes before filling in the hole.

I know I need to replace the whole line but that unfortunately isn't going to happen for the next few months. My wife is the gitter done type but she had abdominal surgery a couple weeks ago and I had to stop her from digging out the whole line.

We'll do it this spring most likely and have a pro put in the new line.

I'd like to thank everyone again and express my deepest gratitude to all of you for your help. You saved us a few hundred bucks.
 
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