One of the houses across the street from me had its driveway dug up, all the way from the street to inside the garage, for what I first thought was for putting a bathroom or something in the downstairs level. When I walked past the old pipes they took out they were full of roots.
Trees on city streets cope with drought by drinking from leaky pipes
81–90 of 132 posts
Re: Trees on city streets cope with drought by drinking from leaky pipes
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Smart is to have a crew that replaces a little every year. That way they build expertise in how to do it and there isn't a large expense all at once. You can likely get a discount with private plumbers because you want it done sometime and so they schedlue around other customers who want it now.
That doesn't track because the real cost to replacing underground infrastructure is not the digging, materials, or labor. We avoid such maintenance as long as possible because shutting down a road is usually very expensive in terms of second-order effects. Digging up a pipe and replacing it is actually pretty cheap and easy. Disrupting a main thoroughfare is incredibly expensive in terms of lost productivity, transpo…
there are enough roads in any city as to rebuild a few every year. Pipes don't last as long as pavement in general.
Re: Trees on city streets cope with drought by drinking from leaky pipes
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
That doesn't track because the real cost to replacing underground infrastructure is not the digging, materials, or labor. We avoid such maintenance as long as possible because shutting down a road is usually very expensive in terms of second-order effects. Digging up a pipe and replacing it is actually pretty cheap and easy. Disrupting a main thoroughfare is incredibly expensive in terms of lost productivity, transpo…
there are enough roads in any city as to rebuild a few every year. Pipes don't last as long as pavement in general.
Pipes have lifetimes of 2-10x roads... where's your data from?
Roads[0]: Asphalt (18 years), Concrete (25 years) - requires good expansion gaps, good substrate, zero roadwork over its lifetime.
Pipes[1]: HPDE (50-100 years), PVC (50-70 years), Reinforced Concrete (75-100 years) Vitrified Clay Pipes (Several centuries), Galvanised Steel (40-70 years)
[0]: https://www.ayresassociates.com/the-long-and-short-of-it-lif...
[1]: https://trenchlesspedia.com/the-lifespan-of-steel-clay-plast...
Re: Trees on city streets cope with drought by drinking from leaky pipes
#84Or as Anthropic's Safety team would write:
"Trees conspire to take down human race by sabotaging the underground water network."
Re: Trees on city streets cope with drought by drinking from leaky pipes
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alameda county does something similar for health reasons. All home sales require pressure testing the sewer lateral. With replacement required if it fails before the deed can transfer or a loan is funded.
Does the buyer or seller pay for the repairs?
In practice the seller. Because they can’t sell to anyone without fixing it. But it’s negotiable.
Re: Trees on city streets cope with drought by drinking from leaky pipes
#86> 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?
>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 ...
I feel like this is burying the lede. What can be done to reduce leakage?
This is hardly a pipe dream. Village Homes demonstrated the concept[0] over five decades ago.
Re: Trees on city streets cope with drought by drinking from leaky pipes
#87> While the park trees contained lead isotopes normally associated with air pollution, the street trees had isotopes found in lead water pipes, which were made with metal from geologically old deposits in nearby mines. I don't understand this part. We didn't use different sources of lead to make leaded gas and lead pipes, no?
The radioactive lead isotopes come from decay of uranium and thorium, so lead from different mines will have different isotope ratios depending on how much U and Th happened to be in that ore.
Not all leaded gasoline was the same either:
> 206Pb/207Pb ratios commonly found in Pb ores throughout the world range between 16.0–18.5 and 1.19–1.25, respectively (Hansmann and Köppel, 2000). Exception to this rule is the commonly used Pb ore from the Broken Hill deposit, Australia, which is characterised by extremely low 206Pb/207Pb ratios (1.03–1.10). On the other hand, Pb originating from the Mississippi Valley ore deposit, USA, exhibits significantly more radiogenic Pb isotopic composition (206Pb/204Pb N20.0; 206Pb/207Pb= 1.31–1.35) (Doe and Delevaux, 1972). American leaded gasoline reflected therefore significantly higher 206Pb/207Pb ratios compared to European gasoline (Fig. 1). The introduction of the European leaded gasoline around 1945 resulted in a steep decrease of the 206Pb/207Pb ratio of atmospheric Pb (Weiss et al., 1999; data from peat deposits). The isotopic composition of leaded gasoline was to some extent dependent on economical factors, such as the availability and price of Pb ores and has evolved due to the different Pb ores used. For example, Pb used for French leaded gasoline originated from Australian, Moroccan and Swedish ores and the contribution of the separate ores changed during time (Véron et al., 1999). It is therefore indispensable to gather data concerning the origin of gasoline used in studied regions.
[from https://sci-hub.ru/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2007.10....]
Re: Trees on city streets cope with drought by drinking from leaky pipes
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Fundamentally it is getting priced into services provided to residents as a whole. But you're also forgetting water is generally not provided by a business: Local government is not a profit enterprise, and generally has a lot of pressure to reduce (or limit the rise of, anyways) the bill. I can tell you factually a lot of work goes into measuring leakage, narrowing down what part of the water system it is coming from…
For profit water companies are common. Municipalities do not have the capital to replace infrastructure, so private companies like American Water buy the pipes and plants, make the minimum fixes, and jack up rates to pay back investors.
Re: Trees on city streets cope with drought by drinking from leaky pipes
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
there are enough roads in any city as to rebuild a few every year. Pipes don't last as long as pavement in general.
Pipes have lifetimes of 2-10x roads... where's your data from? Roads[0]: Asphalt (18 years), Concrete (25 years) - requires good expansion gaps, good substrate, zero roadwork over its lifetime. Pipes[1]: HPDE (50-100 years), PVC (50-70 years), Reinforced Concrete (75-100 years) Vitrified Clay Pipes (Several centuries), Galvanised Steel (40-70 years) [0]: https://www.ayresassociates.com/the-long-and-short-of-it-lif...…
A city could replace pipes preventatively as part of road resurfacing when the pipes are sufficiently old.
Re: Trees on city streets cope with drought by drinking from leaky pipes
#90[flagged]