Sealing pipe through basement wall

[olivercfc]

This is a 15 year old house and the builder put 3/4" copper through the basement wall (via cored hole) for the water supply - no sleeve. It's a reasonably tight fit - about a millimeter of free space.

Last week we realized the pipe was broken inside the basement wall. The inside of the basement was dry but after digging down to the outside entry point we could see water spurting out.

We replaced it with like-for-like but now have to seal it up - this is where my confusion starts.

I'm guessing they used hydraulic cement on the inside (a layer of something was applied) so any leaks wouldn't penetrate the house and be forced back outside.

I'm not sure what was on the outside because I assume the leaked water had washed it away.

On one hand, I'm thinking make the outside as waterproof as possible but if the pipe burst in the wall, the water would go inside the basement.
If I make both sides as waterproof as possible, what happens to any water if the pipe bursts?

I don't think just grading the soil will work because the pipe is pitched slightly downwards. I'm kind of wondering if thats how it's always been and 15 years of water penetration caused the original pipe to weaken (when we removed it, we saw a kink half way but that may have come from helping it through with a hammer)

So.. whats the advice for sealing this thing?

 

[Plumber69]

No sleeve. Should of got a plumber. Concrete and copper ain't the best of friends. If you already had a hole and got the pipe out. A bigger hilti drill bit would of went thru that in less then a minute. Shame on you

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Plumber69]

Your pipe probly failed cause the copper on concrete. They make a silicone just for this

 

[Dgeist]

If it's already connected back up, you may be able to isolate the copper from the concrete with polyurethane foam, but there's not much room in there for the foam to creep/expand. You may have the problem again in 10-15 years if the copper is in direct contact with concrete. If it's not too hard, I'd say pull it back out, bore the hole out large enough for a PVC sleeve sized large enough that you can get a decent gap between it's ID and the tube's OD, then use hydraulic or similar outside the PVC (since it's basically non-reactive) and a good quality closed cell foam or (even better) outdoor rated urethane caulking between the sleeve and the copper. The latter will stick to nearly anything clean, will flex nicely with thermal expansion (unlike spray foam) and is UV resistant in case left exposed.

 

[Reach4]

In addition to the other things, if you ever replace that copper again, use type K, which has green ink.

 

[olivercfc]

I did use K copper (which was surprisingly hard to find) and wrapped it in silicon tape where it goes thru the basement wall - just looking to seal each end

 

[Reach4]

I did use K copper (which was surprisingly hard to find) and wrapped it in silicon tape where it goes thru the basement wall - just looking to seal each end

Just checking. The others have the sealing pretty well covered if you widen the hole.

However if you are going to keep the hole the same size for now, you might look at the 3M marine adhesives. Their 5200 not-fast version looks interesting. Any sealing pretty much needs to be from outside, unless you have a process of injecting the sealant under pressure.