Protech

What causes copper tuberculation?

To be clear, I'm not talking about erosion-corrosion, flux pitting or glavanic corrosion. I'm talking about that random green chickin pox looking stuff that cause pin holes. Seems like it must be something in the water as it isn't localized usually.

I think this is a toutahnow kinda question

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Plumber, Repiping, Replumbing, Leak Detection, Solar Water Heater, Drain Cleaner, Pipe Leak, Polk County Plumber, Lakeland Plumber, Winter Haven Plumber, Haines City Plumber, Bartow Plumber

PLUMBER_BILL

[quote=Protech;94655]What causes copper tuberculation?

To be clear, I'm not talking about erosion-corrosion, flux pitting or glavanic corrosion. I'm talking about that random green chickin pox looking stuff that cause pin holes. Seems like it must be something in the water as it isn't localized usually.

Protech ... I also talk on PDL & PIPDL on both is a 80 something year old master plumber, lives in Florida ... An expert on pinholes in copper.

Bud Hardner is his name, here is a link.

http://www.copperknight.com/

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Bill Parr LMP
www.parrsplumbing.com

click on ... A little of this and a little of that

Redwood

I think it's directly related to that swill you Floridians call water...

In other areas of the country we'd call it battery acid.

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SlickRick

Ken, maybe you should have a section analized at a lab. As smart as you are, you might come up with a solution to prevent it or stop it in its tracks.

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"I believe human-beings and fist can co-exist peacefully....."

GW

ESPinc

Are you talking about something like this:





Those are from my ongoing slab leak project. We have finally scheduled the home re-pipe job.

This is not from flux, it is a water issue..

I got the report from Mueller, will try to post it later.

Ron

Sounds like Florida need to ban copper all together and go all pex.

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ToUtahNow

The short answer is all of the above. The tubercles are the result of corrosion but it could be one of a million things related to the water. In my valley in is for the most part dissolved gasses. The funny part is it only seems to be the annealed copper that fails. The only way you will every know with any certainty what the mechanism of failure is would be to hire a Metallurgist and have the pipe analyzed with a Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX) in a Scanning Electron Microscope (SME). When they examine the corrosion site any element which is not copper will be identified. If the Metallurgist cannot identify the problem you would need to hire a Chemist as well. It is not cheap to find the real answers hence all most plumbers need to know is it is a corrosion caused by the environment the pipe is in.

Mark

TheMaster

I think a few things can cause the same problem. The soil,the water and stray current or a mix of all 3,2 or just 1. I've been to homes where the copper main was pinholed with green nodules everywhere.......only the pipe in the ground was like that....the pipe hanging under the house was in perfect condition......I say its electrolisis. Things can change too...what was doing the damage may be gone by the time I get there and find the damage. Its not the water here or we would have more of it happening.....its too random to be the water here. Here the soil is different in different parts of the city......I find more of it down toward the swampy part of the city where the ground stays wet......great for condutivity.

ESPinc

I also thought my customers issue is something to do with electrolysis. It seems all the under ground copper is like those pics I posted and only on the cold supply lines. All lines above slab seem to be clear or at least the bath we started to remodel on Thursday were clear. This place also had a sulfur smell on 1 lav (cold side) in the master bath in the morning for a few minutes, that disappeared since we installed a water softner and a whole house carbon filter system. The hot lines have a recir system so the water is constantly moving which seems to keep the development of corrosion to a minimum. Now I will try to figure how to post the Mueller report. The pictures really make me wonder what this does to our body..

ToUtahNow

For what it's worth, I was told by one of the top specialist in the copper corrosion that electrolysis is the most over used word in copper corrosion. It's not that it doesn't happen but it usually is something other than electrolysis.

Mark