On Fri, 12 Oct 2012 14:58:36 -0700 (PDT), Nona
wrote:

We have experienced catastrophic/basement flooding leaks using Schedule 80 piping on our well water treatment system 3 different times now, even though the plumbing was installed by two different experienced, licensed plumbers who both claim they have never seen Schedule 80 piping fail in this way.

The main plumbing in our house is copper. The water comes out of the well pump (60 psi) into white plastic (Schedule 40?) line and then flows through Schedule 80 piping to a retention tank and then through Schedule 80 piping again to copper piping to the filtration/water softening tanks which have Schedule 80 joins then back out into the copper lines to the house. Our well water has a lot of sediment and iron in it but generally no other harmful chemicals.

The first two leaks occurred when the Schedule 80 pipe cracked at the join with both the filtration and water softening tanks. The first plumber appears to have replaced the Schedule 80 pipe with Schedule 40 pipe and it seems to have fixed the problem (although our second plumber is confused as to why Schedule 40 would work when Schedule 80 did not). The third time we had a failure it was at the elbow join between Schedule 80 piping from the retention tank into the copper house lines. The join split completely.

I am just curious if anyone else has experienced this and/or if you might have any explanations why this occurred or what to do to prevent these breaks from occurring in future. Thanks for any information!


Two thoughts. Schedule 80 is more rigid and perhaps, for some reason,
it is getting stressed and cracked while the S40 flexes.

The S80 was made by the outfit mentioned in another tread and is
defective.

OK a third thought. The warehouse has the S80 pipe sitting in the
yard for the past 15 years exposed to UV light and both guys bought
from the same batch.

Seem like S80 is overkill anyway. I know of a couple of softeners
that run about 300 to 500 GPH through them and have been working well
with S40 for the past 10 years.