However, you owe it to yourself to be familiar with this unique form of sewer pipe because it could be a ticking time bomb beneath your feet. People of color live in many of the city’s older neighborhoods, giving a social justice component to the need glass pipes to replace the aging, tainted pipes. The house being worked on at Wednesday’s event, at 515 Second St. in the West Hill neighborhood, was a rental home. The owner noticed a leaking service line, a typical way that people end up replacing those pipes.
A list of certified laboratories are available from your state or local drinking water authority. Contact your water supplier as they may have useful information, including whether the service connector used in your home or area is made of lead. To address corrosion of lead and copper into drinking water, EPA issued the Lead and Copper Rule under the authority of the SDWA. One requirement of the LCR is corrosion control treatment to prevent lead and copper from contaminating drinking water.
Household plumbing fixtures, welding solder, and pipe fittings made prior to 1986 may also contain lead. Removing lead from America’s drinking water is gathering political support. President Biden’s American glass pipes Jobs Plan proposes $45 billion to replace lead pipes and service lines across the United States. The pending Senate infrastructure bill includes $15 billion over five years for lead pipe removal.
This information applies to most situations and to a large majority of the population, but individual circumstances may vary. Some situations, such as cases involving highly corrosive water, may require additional recommendations or more stringent actions. Your local water authority is always your first source for testing and identifying lead contamination in your tap water.
Do not attempt to thaw pipes without turning off the main shut-off valve. This way, if you do have a pipe burst, the damage would be limited since there will not be water to feed the leak. This would be the federal government’s most ambitious effort on this front to date—and research water pipes suggests that the public health and economic benefits of doing so are extensive. One easy way to tell ABS and PVC apart is that ABS pipes are black and PVC pipes are white. But since pipes aren’t meant to be seen, plumbers are usually more interested in other qualities.