Hey, pressure is pressure and water hammer is certainly a possible cause of failure in ANY pipe. My wife can tell you about a CPVC failure she went to look at here in SoCal when she was working for Central. There was a residential subdivision in Rancho Cucamonga, CA (near Riverside, East of LA) that was experiencing repeated failures (like bursting blow-outs, not hairline cracks) and the developer and the HOA were lining up the attorneys to make a run. Long story short, the water company was doing so much work in the surrounding area to keep pace with new home construction that there was a lot of service up/service down activity to the extent that it was spiking the surrounding neighborhood. Domestic systems were protected by their regulators and sprinkler systems were getting blasted. I've seen what hammer from a fire pump can do on UG pipe as well. I worked on a legal matter where a GC was building the last warehouse in a campus of 5 buildings. The developer specialized in highly protected risk storage facilities, so the entire project was ESFR, with a " central plant" fire pump arranged to supply all sprinklers and hydrants. The GC was using the end hydrant for construction water and thus turning the fire pump on and off. The consequence of that little scenario was something that you had to see with you own eyes to believe: Class 200 C-900 PVC blown out of shape and bubbled in places to nearly double its 8" diameter. Eventually, a bell just gave up and the sumbitch blew completely out of the ground according to witnesses. But the extent of the damage to the pipe was awesome.
Steve Leyton Protection Design & Consulting -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Todd Williams - FPDC Sent: Wednesday, November 21, 2007 4:03 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Interesting story This happened just up the road from me. http://www.norwichbulletin.com/news/x579214634. It's good for sprinklers, bad for water damage. I was talking to a fitter (he didn't do the job, but claimed to be familiar with it) who told me that the building has a fire pump for the standpipe and the sprinkler piping is CPVC. His thought was that if air is trapped in the CPVC pipe and there is a water hammer from the pump starting, that could cause a CPVC pipe to burst. I would think if the jockey pump is set properly, water hammer would not be an issue. Any thoughts? Any experience with CPVC bursting due to water hammer? I know the Fire Marshal fairly well and I'll see what I can glean from him next time we speak. Todd G. Williams, PE Fire Protection Design/Consulting Stonington, Connecticut www.fpdc.com 860.535.2080 _______________________________________________ Sprinklerforum mailing list [email protected] http://lists.firesprinkler.org/mailman/listinfo/sprinklerforum To Unsubscribe, send an email to:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Put the word unsubscribe in the subject field) _______________________________________________ Sprinklerforum mailing list [email protected] http://lists.firesprinkler.org/mailman/listinfo/sprinklerforum To Unsubscribe, send an email to:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Put the word unsubscribe in the subject field)
