Water hammer issues? or freeze damage.

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toebone51

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7 humidifiers on the roof of a 2 story hospital. fed from a RO system in the boiler room. they are hooked up to the units with true union ball valves and a true union check valve. 2 of the check valve union nuts busted this past winter. thinking freeze damage. just had the same happen to another unit and it is not cold here now.
 

Terry

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It could have happened earlier and you've just noticed it now.
It's doubtful that water hammer broke the fitting. Have you heard pipes banging? If you have water hammer on the solenoid valves, it could be a good idea to add hammer arrestors though.

Normally freezing will split the pipe.
 

toebone51

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Terry, thanks for the reply.

It could have happened earlier and you've just noticed it now.
It's doubtful that water hammer broke the fitting. Have you heard pipes banging? If you have water hammer on the solenoid valves, it could be a good idea to add hammer arrestors though.

Normally freezing will split the pipe.

I forgot to mention that the piping to the humidifiers is sch. 80 pvc, wrapped with heat tape and insulated. When the pump in the boiler room kicks on and off the line jumps and as the pressure switch is bleeding down it continues to slightly move. On demand from the solenoids on the humidifiers doing there thing. Now I'm thinking about a similar problem I had about 5 years ago with a vortisand filter serving the cooling tower. I hooked it up using sch 80 pvc unions. I had at least 2 union nut failures. The unit hammered when it went from service to backwash. Solved that problem by installing pvc flanges instead of unions. I don't think I have enough room to install hammer arrestors, so I'm thinking my only options are to flange from the pvc to stainless. What do you think?
 
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