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Trees on city streets cope with drought by drinking from leaky pipes

newscientist.com

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Re: Trees on city streets cope with drought by drinking from leaky pipes

#31

Post by ocdtrekkie »

londons_explore wrote: post #21

I wonder how much human health is impacted by these leaky pipes. I would like to see a city where pipes are guaranteed leak free, for example by making them double walled with high pressure air in the outer layer, and then seeing if disease levels in the city are lower.

For what it's worth, utilities do care quite a bit about leaks (it's service they are providing which they can't bill for!) and use various testing apparatus to locate leaky parts of underground systems for repair and replacement.

Considering the difficulty and cost of repairing underground anything, most of which will be there for many many decades, it's never going to be perfect, but there's a lot of resources that do go into improving this.

Re: Trees on city streets cope with drought by drinking from leaky pipes

#32

Post by nashashmi »

londons_explore wrote: post #21

I wonder how much human health is impacted by these leaky pipes. I would like to see a city where pipes are guaranteed leak free, for example by making them double walled with high pressure air in the outer layer, and then seeing if disease levels in the city are lower.

Water pipes are under pressure. So outside water and pollutants do not infiltrate into leaky pipes. Unless you have a water shutoff. But those situations are minimal.

Re: Trees on city streets cope with drought by drinking from leaky pipes

#34

Post by x775 »

> Maple trees need to consume around 50 litres of water per day. Since street trees can’t get much of this from rainwater, which falls on concrete and drains into the city’s sewers, Poirier says the most likely explanation is that it is coming from Montreal’s leaky pipes, which lose 500 million litres of water per day.

I feel like this is burying the lede.

What can be done to reduce leakage?

Re: Trees on city streets cope with drought by drinking from leaky pipes

#35

Post by CalRobert »

x775 wrote: post #34

> Maple trees need to consume around 50 litres of water per day. Since street trees can’t get much of this from rainwater, which falls on concrete and drains into the city’s sewers, Poirier says the most likely explanation is that it is coming from Montreal’s leaky pipes, which lose 500 million litres of water per day. I feel like this is burying the lede. What can be done to reduce leakage?

Hopefully the lede, lead would be an even bigger concern.

Re: Trees on city streets cope with drought by drinking from leaky pipes

#36

Post by 1over137 »

CalRobert wrote: post #35
x775 wrote: post #34

> Maple trees need to consume around 50 litres of water per day. Since street trees can’t get much of this from rainwater, which falls on concrete and drains into the city’s sewers, Poirier says the most likely explanation is that it is coming from Montreal’s leaky pipes, which lose 500 million litres of water per day. I feel like this is burying the lede. What can be done to reduce leakage?

Hopefully the lede, lead would be an even bigger concern.

Montreal has plenty of lead pipes too. ;(

Re: Trees on city streets cope with drought by drinking from leaky pipes

#37

Post by Jenk »

londons_explore wrote: post #21

I wonder how much human health is impacted by these leaky pipes. I would like to see a city where pipes are guaranteed leak free, for example by making them double walled with high pressure air in the outer layer, and then seeing if disease levels in the city are lower.

That double wall thing is a red herring. The water system already protects against intrusion because the water itself exerts pressure on the pipes. Thus leaks are typically of the water getting out and not contamination of the water (most of the time, anyway.)

Contamination rarely happens outside of the source of supply, and not somewhere along the pipeline.

Re: Trees on city streets cope with drought by drinking from leaky pipes

#38

Post by npstr »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #31
londons_explore wrote: post #21

I wonder how much human health is impacted by these leaky pipes. I would like to see a city where pipes are guaranteed leak free, for example by making them double walled with high pressure air in the outer layer, and then seeing if disease levels in the city are lower.

For what it's worth, utilities do care quite a bit about leaks (it's service they are providing which they can't bill for!) and use various testing apparatus to locate leaky parts of underground systems for repair and replacement. Considering the difficulty and cost of repairing underground anything, most of which will be there for many many decades, it's never going to be perfect, but there's a lot of resources that…

Why can't they bill for it? It's not like they are losing money on it, it's simply getting priced into the billable services they provide. Utilities are usually monopolistic, so there is little incentive for them to fix this.

Re: Trees on city streets cope with drought by drinking from leaky pipes

#39

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

abhiyerra wrote: post #17
abstractspoon wrote: post #3

This is not news. Having to rebore pipes due to tree roots has been around for decades

Heh. Yesterday, we had a plumber over who told us we have to rebore our sewage pipes because roots got in. It is an old house with cast iron pipes and they still got in.

I've never heard it called "reboring" - wonder if there is a different procedure for when it gets really bad, but I'd have thought problems (backup) would happen pretty quickly, so wouldn't be too bad as long as you take care of it.

They basically use something like a weed whacker fed down the pipe, except it uses a short bit of chain instead of trimmer line, and will pulverise any intruding roots.

Re: Trees on city streets cope with drought by drinking from leaky pipes

#40

Post by hinkley »

buildsjets wrote: post #27
panarchy wrote: post #11

Or if you're a willow tree you make a leaky pipe.

Some genius planted a curly willow right in the middle of my house’s septic drain field. That tree cost me $20,000.

You’re not supposed to plane ANY trees in the middle of the septic system.
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