Pat, this brings up an interesting question for me, not an engineer or electrician. A couple of years ago I had to replace a frost free hydrant that was connected to the shop plumbing via copper piping, was this the cause?
It is now connected by a braided line, will this cause a problem in the future?
DD, Excuse the use of your initials but I just can't get used to referring to a nice guy by your handle. I know the fault is mine but there it is...
Anyway, the answer is maybe. Not knowing all the applicable facts of the extant situation, I can't say with much certainty but it is certainly a possibility.
Dissimilar metal corrosion is a powerful destructive force. For example copper pipe and galvanized pipe in contact carrying water is essentially a battery with a short circuit to take all the current produced. And like a zinc carbon flashlight battery, over time the less noble material is consumed, the zinc cup in the case of the old style D cell.
Back when I took a sabbatical and did marine electronics field service engineering I saw lots of examples of dissimilar metal corrosion such as copper shield of coax crimped into a ring terminal to be attached to an aluminum stanchion with stainless steel nuts, bolts, and screws (not about a mass escape from an insane asylum.) Add a little salt and water (ocean going tuna boat in the $10 million category, the ones with a heliport atop the pilot house) and surprise, surprise, surprise, massive corrosion and poor antenna performance. That's OK they have a spare but what do you ask? Isn't the spare done the same way... YUP!!! Oh well the antenna isn't really important it is just the beacon the chopper uses to find the moving tuna boat in reduced visibility or the emergency radio used to summon help or...
I really hate copper pipe for water. A year or so ago two different friends had problems with leaking copper pipes that developed pinholes for no apparent reason. One run was in a buddy's attic to take water from the kitchen sink to the icemaker. He came home from an extended absence to find the sheet rock of the kitchen ceiling on the floor and 3 rooms of the house flooded, all by just a tiny tiny little fine mist coming out of an itsy bitsy pin hole.
The other friend up the road a half mile had the sheetrock in his shop bathroom wall get soggy. He had a copper water pipe running through a plastic sleeve in the slab to a location behind the stool in the bathroom. In the middle of the in-slab run a pinhole developed, the sleeve filled and overflowed at the lower end inside the wall. I replaced the copper with PEX, end of problem. No, I'm not a plumber but neither is the friend who is a DAV who I help with stuff he can't do when I have time.
To the point... frost free hydrants should not contact dissimilar metals anywhere any time period. PEX is a well proven time tested material. If procured from a source of supply that never stores the stuff in the sunlight it can last just about forever. If stored in the sunlight it is seriously degraded and I don''t know how to easily tell. The best insurance is to buy fresh stock from someone who moves it quickly and does not store it outside. I have seen large wholesalers with thousands of feet of rolls of various size PEX in outdoor fenced in compounds. Big chain link fences with razor wire on top. It doesn't get stolen but it does deteriorate. I would never mention Locke Supply by name.
There are lots of ways for a frost free hydrant to fail. Some are easily prevented. avoiding contact with any metal is one.
Pat
"I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"
When we did replace the hydrant, we wrapped it in duct tape and then enclosed it in a pvc pipe thinking it was a reaction to the soil. This summer I will replace the connection to the inside piping with a PEX section to prevent this from happening again.
It is a real pain to dig down six feet after breaking a hole in the concrete floor and going around a bunch of drain and sewer pipes buried above the water line. [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img]
Don't you just hate having to do stuff like that over again?
I have a place in a pasture just down hill from an acre residential lot that is surrounded by my land on three sides that is always wet to the point of leaving tracks if you drive on it. We avoid it when haying. Recently I found clear water coming out of the ground and called the DEQ. Eventually they put dye in a toilet in the house but none showed up in the flow. I thought maybe it was grey water from the laundry.
The DEQ guy (young lad on the job 7 months) told me to go ahead and dig down to see what is there and if I found a pipe to cap it off. Gee, why would he say that if he wasn't privy to some info shared with him by the residence owner? I had dumped 3 dump trailer loads of dirt on the wet place before the water broke the surface and I realized it wasn't just a damp place from ground water. I quit dumping dirt when I saw considerable surface flow.
Anyway I dug down and found a 4 inch sewer line but I accidentally hooked it with the FEL bucket and pulled out a section. So I had to dig down again to find it, more carefully and with some hand shovel work. The thin wall 4 inch PVC was oval shaped and extremely difficult to get the round cap onto the end but I managed with brute strength and awkwardness.
I then back filled and went on with my fencing work that had brought me to this location in the first place. The lady comes to the fence and motions me over. She says the line comes from a well. I ask what well and she shows me a galvanized sheet metal (looks like a stove pipe) 4 inch in diameter sticking up 2 inches above ground next to a tree a few feet over the property line on my side. (I had not noticed it over the years.)
Why would a well have a 4 inch sewer pipe connected to it. An artesian well? Needing a 4 inch line?
Oh well, I acted in good faith with the information presented me and my reward is to be led astray and it is likely that water from whatever source could pop up again and I will be having to dig up stuff again to fix the "REAL" problem, whatever it turns out to be.
I feel your pain. You do the best you can with your understanding and your reward for not having a correct picture is to do it again. I really hate having to do stuff again. I'm not all that fond of having information "managed" by folks with an agenda.
Pat
"I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"
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