Fire sprinkler system plastic pipe failures

Plastic sprinkler pipes cracking due to biocide polymer leaching from steel pipes into stagnant water. Used to extend the previous lecture's theme on material substitution failures in fluid-conveyance systems.

We talked about conveying gas and different materials that have been used through the ages, and how we now tend to use a lot of plastic or corrugated stainless steel, and these materials tend to develop different types of problems. Let me go to another material that has developed problems that were sort of surprising. We used to use carbon steel pipe for sprinkler systems. This is a fire sprinkler system, and this one is actually now spreading a bunch of water. These things operate around 200 psi, so this gets a lot of water. But no one has ever died in a home that's had a sprinkler system in over a hundred years. So it works. You might end up with a home that, just like Houston, is flooded out, but it works. It keeps people from dying in fires.