Does Your Pipeline Require Air Valves?

Jeff Milroy, Product Manager for Henry Pratt Company, explains why you should consider installing air valves in your utility’s pipelines.

The following is an excerpt from a Q&A with Water Online Radio. Click on the Radio Player above to hear the full interview.

Water Online Radio: What’s the impact of a pipeline break?

Jeff: One pipeline break by itself for a Class 2 municipality can cost fifty thousand dollars. Some people have estimates up to two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars to fix one broken pipeline.

The whole point of an air valve is to eliminate surge in a pipeline and avoid expensive breaks.

Water Online Radio: Are water utilities overlooking the risk?

Jeff: It’s interesting that there's still a perception that not all pipelines require air valves. Some engineers still think that they can get away without putting air valves into a pipeline. People are aware of deterioration of the pipeline on the exterior but think about the corrosion inside the pipe. How much more corrosion can occur on the inside? The pressure spikes that can result from just a little surging will actually blow out a pipeline relatively easy. If you get a spike of 600psi, let's say, the pipeline is gone.

Not only that, if the pipeline blows out at the bottom of a hill, and you have a large media pipe going over the rise at the top of the hill, you now have a column separation of the water and a vacuum form in the pipeline. Anytime you have a vacuum form in a pipeline, it's not a good thing. You could have an immediate collapse of the pipeline…

Click on the Radio Player above to hear the full interview.