old man wanted lead pipes for water line repair

Originally Posted by Scrappah

For Otto:

It doesn't make sense. The municipal water district that i was responsible for was ranked as one of the worst in the state. In fact ... the federal government came in and threatened to shut us down. As far as i know there were only five or six services that had a lead pigtail going from the corporation valve to the curb valve. Aside from that there was no lead pipe in the system.

Are you sure you don't mean galvanized iron pipe ? I've replaced a lot of that over the years because the scale builds up inside and narrows the I.D. of the pipe down to about 1/8". LOL .... the brass / galvanized connections are even worse !

They outlawed galvanized for use in water & fuel piping about twenty years ago because the zinc coating inside was flaking off and causing health problems.



Those two kinds of pipe do look similar.

Lead service pipes were very common in Ontario for houses built before the 1950's. This was probably the case throughout North America. The attached link gives the mitigation strategy for the City of Toronto. There is so much of the stuff out there that replacing it all a once wouldn't be doable (or affordable).

http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2...file-34876.pdf

I wasn't aware of the health risks of galvanized pipe. I always thought they were being phased out because they would corrode from the inside out and fail without warning. I guess it's just one more thing to add to the list of problems associated with old houses. I hate working on them. You never know what you're going to run into.

Originally Posted by Otto

Lead service pipes were very common in Ontario for houses built before the 1950's. This was probably the case throughout North America. The attached link gives the mitigation strategy for the City of Toronto. There is so much of the stuff out there that replacing it all a once wouldn't be doable (or affordable).

http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2...file-34876.pdf

I wasn't aware of the health risks of galvanized pipe. I always thought they were being phased out because they would corrode from the inside out and fail without warning. I guess it's just one more thing to add to the list of problems associated with old houses. I hate working on them. You never know what you're going to run into.

Finally had a chance to check out the link that you had provided. After reading it all the way through it looks like the government there recognizes that lead in the drinking water is a concern and they're taking steps to address it.

Quote:

Health Canada has established a maximum acceptable concentration (MAC) of lead in
drinking water of 10 ppb (parts per billion) in a free flowing sample
of water.