Copper pipes

A number of homeowners across the US have been awakened to a situation which requires prompt attention and has an expensive solution. From about 1980-2000, houses that were built on a slab usually had copper water pipes installed underneath the slab of the house. American copper had became too expensive and so Brazilian copper was substituted for the purer American copper.

Now, slab houses built with Brazilian copper water pipes have a problem. The copper pipes are developing little green spots on the inside of the pipes which gradually totally rot out into holes. The pipes silently begin to leak water. Homeowners don't often notice it until they hear strange sounds in the house or the water bill becomes astrononically high due to the ongoing water loss from underground.

Fixing one leak is like chasing cockroaches....there are always more leaks. And homeowners's insurance won't help because that insurance only covers "damage from leaks not damage to the pipes themselves". The only permanent solution is to "repipe" your house for water. In other words, you create another system to get water to the water sources in your house. This expensive solution involves stringing a PVC line into your house from the water meter through your attic and then connecting new water lines downward to all water sources.

It means carving holes into ceilings, laundry room walls, bedroom walls, bathroom walls and into tiled showers which then later must be re-paired. It means emptying everything out of kitchen cabinets, bathroom cabinets and linen closets when the plumber arrives. If you decide to shut off water to the house so as to minimize the leaking (a good idea), it means filling bottles for drinking water and buckets to flush toilets when you take a shower. It means trying not to fill up the dishwasher by microwaving meals and eating on paper plates. Every time the water is turned on and off, someone must go to the main shutoff valve where a hole has been dug in the ground next to the water meter. "Re-piping" means having plumbers in your house for four days running and having the cat hide under the bed in the far bedroom so the noise doesn't hurt her ears so much.

Living with restricted water reminds me, as hurricanes do, how precious that clear liquid we call "water" is. There are millions upon millions of people in the world who would be delighted to live with the irritations I have just described. We sometimes forget how fortunate we are.[adsense:]