Susan V. Briggs CPD - Plumbing

1926 Plumbing Code in Maine

susanvbriggscpd — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:42:48 +0000

1926_Rules

While searching for the answer to why Maine doesn’t have a 2″ minimum underslab pipe requirement anymore, I came across this copy of the 1926 Plumbing Code. Enjoy!

http://www.maine.gov/dhhs/eng/plumb/Adobe/1926_Rules.pdf

The Plumbing Museum in Watertown,Massachusetts

susanvbriggscpd — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 12:27:19 +0000

Are you into plumbing fixtures? The former American Sanitary Plumbing Museum has been relocated to Watertown, Massachusetts, and is now known as The Plumbing Museum. It is located at J.C Cannistraro and is a wonderful place to see what grandma used! You’ll find everything here, including a replica of an old plumbing shop, all located in a renovated ice house.

The museum is open to the plumbing-appreciating public,Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. by appointment only. Call 617-926-2111 for information. http://www.theplumbingmuseum.org/

Legionnaire’s Disease in The News Again

susanvbriggscpd — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 12:13:31 +0000

Tourist Killed by Hotel Water

Guests at the Epic Hotel in Miami were relocated to another facility after a visitor died and two others were sickened after contracting Legionnaire’s Disease. An investigation by county and state officials revealed that the hotel had installed a powerful water filter to remove chlorine from the city-supplied water, but the system also encouraged bacterial growth. The hotel currently is closed while its water system is being inspected and disinfected.

From ASPE Pipeline (Gretchen Pienta-editor)

“Defunct Sprinkler System in a Single Family Home Floods Basement

susanvbriggscpd — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:45:15 +0000

There was an interesting post on JustAnswer.com the other day. A lawyer was looking for an expert witness regarding the case of the homeowner who’s basement became flooded when a plumber did some work on their home. It appeard that there was an open pipe on a “defunct” sprinkler system in the home. The plumber’s excuse was that as it was a sprinkler system and not the plumbing system, he had no legal authority to work on the sprinkler system.

There are several issues here,

1. Was there a valve on the sprinkler system? Be it a check valve, shut off or alarm check valve. How was the sprinkler system isolated from the plumbing system?

2. Was the plumbing system pressure tested?

3. Did it hold? And if so, did the sprinkler system valve (if there was one) fail after the plumber had the system inspected?

4. Was it the plumber’s duty to inform the home owner of the open pipe and advise them to hire a sprinkler fitter to repair that system?

I have my own opinions on this system failure, what are yours?

4. How

Hello world!

susanvbriggscpd — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:32:15 +0000

Welcome to http://susanvbriggs.WordPress.com. I hope this will be an interesting site to swap plumbing stories, solve problem systems and share new projects.

Hot Water War Stories!

susanvbriggscpd — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 01:00:27 +0000

There are many times when a building has hot water issues. Sometimes it is not enough hot water, sometimes it is a water heater that is not operating correctly. Here is one of my favorite war stories!

I had a call by a contractor one day. He had been trying to figure out why the four large water heaters at a prominent hotel were failing rapidly. These 500 gallon water heaters were installed in a high rise hotel in Boston and they had replaced all but one of them in the previous several months. The hotel had 1000 rooms and had recently installed a recycled water system for the laundry. As the water heaters were located in a sub-basement and the pressures required to get to the top floor was higher than 80 psi delivery, these were all fed with high pressure (above 80 psi), in order to provide 40 psi at the top floor.

Upon inspection of the water heater installation there were several items to note. The first was that the tanks were not manifolded. For those of you not familiar with manifolding multiple tanks, it basically means that the piping to each heater, hot and cold sides should be of equal lengths. You can’t install one heater with 50 feet of pipe from the water service and another one with only 20 feet of pipe. The heater closest to the source water will operate more often than the one with 50 feet of pipe. the other intersting thing of note was that there are generally heaters designated high pressure and low pressure. The tanks were all installed to operate at high pressure. This meant that the pressure at the lower floors of the hotel was probably in excess of 80 psi, and the pressure at the upper floors fell off as one would expect. To this contractors knowledge, there were no pressure regulating valves on the system. But I digress.

As we discussed the tanks, the contractor indicated that the tank farthest from the water service had failed once already. We will call this Tank 1. Tank 2, the next farthest from the water service was in poor condition and leaking in several places. Tank 3, was in poor condition and was about to spring leaks. Tank 4 was in fine condition. Sounds a little like Goldie Locks and the Three bears, but such that it was, something was not right! Manifolding these tanks would solve the biggest problem of unequal use of the tanks. But there was another issue. The recycle water system (RWS). As we stood watching the tanks cycle on and off, the pressure guages at the tanks went to ZERO! After about 5 minutes watching this cycle, we noticed that when the RWS called for water, this is when the tanks lost pressure. When the RWS shut off, the tank pressure returned! These tanks were imploding!

As I traced out the system, I noticed that a solenoid valve had been installed on the cold water main after the takeoff to the RWS and prior to the connection to Tank 4, you remember, the tank closest to the water service. When the RWS called for makeup water, the valve closed and there was no water, or pressure to the water heaters. AH Ha! So no pressure to the tanks. A simple relocation of this valve off the main and on to the branch serving the RWS solved the pressure problem. Manifolding the tanks solved the use issue.

The moral, don’t blame the water heater for poor installation practice. And don’t assume that the 3rd party system installer knows your system. If the original engineer had reviewed the RWS system installation, they would have seen the problem before the tanks failed. This would have saved the owner and the water heater manufacturer alot of money.