ANyone here about the huge water main break last week in Maryland?

[wally426ci]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,471466,00.html

Man, thats crazy, this happened while we were out of town. I work for the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission. Noone ever has really of heard of them when I say where I work, but it was wierd. Im in Ireland meeting people and telling them where Im from. And here they are asking if its near this break that occured....  I guess we got some publicity while i was away.

They speak of aging Infrastructure, I work in the Construction division that oversees the rehab and replacement of water and sewer mains. Just thought id share this with you guys... 

[426HEMI]

Yes I saw it on cnn.  Looked really bad for sure......

[Pistol Gripper]

I like how the media went on and on about the "Aging Infrastructure" and how Obama is going to fix it.  The water main was put in in 1966   
I have underwear older than that !  The reason it broke was unusual freezing temperatures ( no mention of Global Warming from the media ).

P.G.

[wally426ci]

Yeah, we have a ton of breaks every year. Im pretty sure it was a reinforced concrete pipe that failed. We replace Cast Iron Mains with Ductile Iron and now we're starting to do a thicker PVC 900 pipe. We have much older mains than that one that failed but you're right. The majority of breaks are from crazy temperature changes..... Sometimes there can be a fluctuation in pressure casuing an "air hammer" which blows them out as well.......

You gotta wonder how the heck we're gonna keep up with the old pipes breaking, and where do we start with such an important transmission pipe??    oh well, at least its job security for me.. 

[422STROKER]

Yeah they've been breaking around here too, just not like that.

Tom

[71bigblock]

I saw it on the news, too.  Yep, job security for sure.   

[426HEMI]

I know a lot of cities have the same problem.  My old home town replaced all of theirs a few years back because they kept breaking every day.  I hope that more think about the problem ahead of time.  that sure was a lot of water to lose.   Yea it is job security for sure!!!!!