How to Seal Water Pipes from the Inside?

Hi Guillermo, to build on ...

Hi Guillermo, to build on what others have advised and answer your question it depends on the size and strategic nature of the pipeline. Sahara as Anthony advises sends a line through and a microphone picks up the sound of the leak. Very well used and effective. Smartball is an emerging technology and you need points to launch and catch the ball. 

You can set up a test to look at head loss through the pipe which might help quantify the leak. 

PE is a very difficult material to adhere anything to - fusion by melting the material is the only way to achieve a bond. Electrofusion or mechanical jointing is the normal way to joint pipes. 

To achieve a long term solution you may consider sliplining another pipe inside the parent pipe. Alternatively you may consider pipe bursting, if you nee the capacity which entails breaking out the old pipe and pulling another on in - essentially you make use of the hole in the ground. 

Lots of detail on these technologies and fixings can be found at the ISTT (International Society for Trechnless Technology) web-site. 

Hope this helps? 

Steve

Published May 30, 2017 16:43 by Steve Whipp, Independent

Hi Guillermo,  Have a look ...

Hi Guillermo, 

Have a look at Aqualiner - it's a trenchless technology which totally seals the pipe from the inside by adding a thermo-composite sleeve. www.aqualiner.co.uk It has been utilised by a number of water companies in the UK  on drinking water and sewer lines made of various materials including PVC. See a helpful video here http://www.aqualiner.co.uk/videos/animation-aqualiner/

Hope this helps. Sarah

Published May 30, 2017 14:01 by Sarah den Haring, Founder/Director at GreenWater Environmental Water & Sanitation Solutions

Some of practice - detecting ...

Some of practice - detecting of very small leakage in mechanical pipe joints from inside during pressure test. After desperate  efforts with various patented devices we decided to cover joints by some jelly (vaseline) from inside before pipe filling and cheked it after - found some places where jelly was washed out by water under pressure and repaired.   

Published May 30, 2017 12:19 by Dmitry Eremenko

The answers will depend a ...

The answers will depend a bit on the diameter, length and pressure of operation.

For short lengths and smaller diameters operating at a few bar (10s of psi) and above you may have success locating leaks using a modern leak noise correlator. In it's simplest form this requires access to the pipe at two points - one either side of the leak location - where sensors are attached to the pipe. It detects the noise generated by the leak and calculates how far it is from each sensor point to give the leak location.

For larger pipes you could use Sahara or Smartball technology (www.assessaddress.com) which are "in-pipe" acoustic techniques that use a sensor travelling through the pipe to detect and locate the leak noise. Both should detect leaks down to less than 1 bar. Sahara also has a "Conductivity" option that can find leaks in very low pressure systems.  

Repairing is a much bigger challenge - particularly if the pipes are carrying potable water. Again there are some questions about what is required: water quality requirements, working pressures (and variability), pipe size, likely leak size and whether you are looking for a long or short term fix.  

There was some work done in the UK to investigate a technique that used "platelets" (actually these were small blocks of elastomer) injected into the water flow. The platelets travelled with the water with the aim that they got sucked into the leak and blocked it. While this worked under ideal conditions it is much harder to make it work in the field - where there are branches, varying pressure, a range of leak sizes, water quality issues etc to contend with. I don't believe anyone is currently pursuing this option.

At WRc we have particular expertise in deploying sensors into pressurised water pipelines to utilise a range of different condition assessment techniques. We are also interested in techniques to carry out live repair.

Published May 30, 2017 11:54 by Anthony Bond, WRc plc - Senior Consultant

To patch leaks in your PVC ...

To patch leaks in your PVC pipe, perhaps you could do this from the outside. There's a particularly effective epoxy putty product called Free Form Air, that's produced by SmoothOn, https://www.smooth-on.com/

Published May 30, 2017 11:33 by Anthony Reid Harvey