By: Diane Benjamin
Why are water mains in newer subdivisions breaking? If 30 year old pipes break the City will never catch up replacing lead and older pipes before they break. Where is the press release or Social Media post? Lots of citizen chatter, I haven’t found anything official. Maybe everybody is off today.
Say a prayer for the people working outside!
We also have a break in Normal on Centennial Ave right near Colene Hoose. Literally a brand new water main, less than a year old!
WOW! Cheap pipes or not deep enough?
Likely BOTH, Diane. This construction is sounding more and more like very similar problems in Texas. I have family there and I received these kinds of ‘reports’ during the Feb. 2021 Texas ‘Ice Bomb’. In fact, they couldn’t believe how “shallow and cheap” ‘underground’ piping is…especially in the newer home additions.
Both, plus, city workers and “city approved” workers often seem to do quite sub standard, shall we say, work, and yes I know this from experience.
Sub-standard is the new Equity standard. It doesn’t matter what the work looks like, it’s what the workers look like that really matters. I’m not being racist here, equity is.
This is what happens when the lowest bidder does the work….the government way.
Those subdivisions are garbage. Put up by shoddy developers who use garbage bnuilding materials to make the quickest buck they can. It cracks me up to see how much people pay just to say they live in Hawthorne, Eagle Creek, or whatever other subdivision just to “keep up with the Joneses.”
Is your solution that developers and governments should select the highest bidders for this type of infrastructure work to avoid future problems?
No, just pick someone who will do a good job. Perhaps require bidders to also guarantee their work.
I live in an older house and wouldn’t trade it for anything in new subdivisions. When our house was built, the workman took pride in their work.
Neither would I. My house was built in 1967 and is far and away built better than any of the garbage on the east side of Veteran’s Parkway.
Do you understand physics? When it gets this cold, there is no reasonable depth for any pipe to be buried because the force at worth here is thermal shock. The soil above a pipe will raise up or compress, which can lead to a breach no matter how far down the pipe itself is buried.
Why isn’t every one broken then?
Exactly.
Do you understand that this didn’t happen much at ALL in the distant past? By distant I mean 30-40+ years ago when things were done better and most materials were better. If it is as you say, then it would have been always happening all along and like Diane said to all of the pipes.