I live in Detroit, where due to the middle class largely leaving the city, we have limited funds, and thus often poor services. So not surprisingly, I often dread the arrival of winter, when (I assumed) most water mains break, due to freezing. But I have been hearing a lot of stories on the news of water mains breaking in the summer.
What causes water mains to break in the summer? I would think that would be the one time of year when it would be virtually impossible.
Side notes: Yeah, in the winter, I often flush my toilet several times during the night, in a (I hope not hopeless) attempt to keep the water flowing. Also, the issue has been getting a lot of press. And I think things might be taking a turn for the better, to slight degree now, at least.
Is there a marked difference in daytime and night temperatures? That can cause cracks to form due to compression and expansion and the pipes to fail eventually.
I’d imagine that both internal and external stresses are to blame. Freezing is an obvious one but I suspect that drying and shrinking ground could also exert force. In short, any shift in the stability or support of the surrounding ground is going to present a risk.
We lived in an area with clay soil. Water pipes broke when the clay shrunk, when it dried out. Conversely the clay doesn’t normally shift much when it gets wet, because it has this odd property that it becomes water-proof when it becomes wet, so the movement is really slow and gentle as it becomes wet.
But pipes mostly broke when they exceeded their design life, and the soil was disturbed by repairs. So the mains would break, then break again, then break again.
I’m guessing it’s due to differing moisture levels; my pier and beam house shifts noticeably between seasons, and it’s primarily due to the clay soil expanding and contracting with varying rainfall amounts.
I imagine that pipes either crack, or the joints work loose over years and decades of motion due to seasonal variations in rainfall.
The steel pipes probably crack due to hardness, which comes from poor welding jobs, corrosion and work hardening… So clay soils may cause cracking as they “react” to water , swelling and shrinking…
Naturally enough pipes under poorly built roads may be cracked by the movement of large trucks…
