When Nature & Plumbing Collide

Every year when the seasons change, we find ourselves repairing plumbing pipes buried in the ground due to soil movement with the change in seasons.  Typically, it will be when the ground dries out or the ground becomes heavily saturated.

Broken Water Mains

Over the last week our residential Master Plumbers have been busy in Mount Barker fixing broken water mains due to the ground swelling and putting pressure on the connections buried in the dirt.  The challenge with fixing these leaks is that they have typically been leaking for a while and tree root invasion in the area has become dense due to the high moisture content in the local area, this makes it very hard to expose the damaged section of pipe because all the tree roots must firstly be removed without damaging more of the water main in the same process. Once we have cleared the area the next bit is typically straight forward removing the cracked plastic fitting and replacing it with a new plasson poly connector, and we can have the water restored promptly, plumbing crisis over!

Hot Water Copper Pipe

Another emergency repair we were called to in the Adelaide Hills was another burst water pipe, this was a hot water copper pipe under a concrete floor of a commercial kitchen in Stirling.  The customer had noticed that the floor in the middle of their kitchen was drying out fast when washed every night and then felt the ground and noted it was very warm in one spot, they were also running out of LPG gas quicker than usual. The reason behind this was that the burst water pipe was continually running and causing the Rinnai Duo Demand 32 hot water services to continually circulate water through the Grundfos circulating pump which in turn was using lots of gas from the 45-kilogram propane cylinders onsite and causing the hot water to heat the concrete slab in the middle of the kitchen. The hardest part about fixing this issue was getting to the broken pipe.  We had to come back after hours when the kitchen was not in use and cut the floor then jack hammer the concrete out and find the issue.  Once the 20mm copper tube was exposed and cleaned the rest of the job was relatively easy to perform and we could get the hot water turned back onto the business and save the customer some money through not wasting there LPG and water anymore. As you can see, we have been busy lately servicing our clients in the Adelaide Hills and as the weather gets cooler, we will start to pick up more jobs with blown hot water services, failed storm water pumps and frozen pipes, every winter is a busy time for the Mayfair Plumbing team in the Adelaide Hills and given the bureau of metrology’s forecast this winter 2023 is certain to be cold and even busier than normal.