What is PVC piping? PVC (Poly Vinyl Chloride) pipe is pipe made of a special type of plastic that has a very high strength and durability. This special plastic pipe can quite commonly be found used in new construction for sanitary sewers to transport human waste, storm sewers to transport rain water away from a site, and also used for water mains to provide a water supply to new buildings. The reason that PVC pipe can be found used for so many different applications is not just because of its high strength and durability, but also because the pipe is very cost friendly and has a very high life span of around 100 years.
PVC was discovered entirely by accident in 1872 by a German chemist named Eugene Baumann. The chemist had left a flask containing vinyl chloride (a colorless gas) sitting exposed to sunlight, and when he next saw the flask small white pieces of solid material had popped up inside the flask. Unfortunately this early version of PVC was very difficult to work with and was not able to be used for commercial products. In 1926 this finally changed when a man named Waldo Semon invented a new method of producing PVC by mixing it with several different additives. This new method of production made the material much more flexible which in turn made the material much easier to work with, and not too long after, PVC started to gain popularity in commercial use. In 1932 the first tubes were made from PVC and then 3 years later in 1935 the first pipes were made from PVC. In 1936 the very first PVC pipes were installed in Germany to be used as water supply for residential drinking water. Many of these pipes are still in use today due to the long life span of PVC.
Another one of the many benefits of PVC pipe is that it is very easy to install due to how lightweight this type of pipe is. Unlike other pipe material such as pre-cast concrete, which would have to be hooked up to a machine like an excavator and placed mechanically due to weight, PVC pipe is light enough that it can be carried and placed in a trench by hand. When being installed PVC pipe is easy to assemble together thanks to the pipe having 2 different ends. The one end matches the typical diameter of the pipe, while the other end is belled to allow for easy insertion of the next pipe. With how lightweight PVC pipe is mixed with the easy insertion, this type of pipe can be placed in the ground with a very high efficiency. It is possible for a single crew to place well over a hundred meters of pipe in a single day.
Here at Eco Groundworks we’re no stranger to installing PVC pipes. We’ve had the joy of putting in several new sanitary sewers, storm sewers, and water mains, which were all built using PVC pipe. As our civil infrastructure department continues to expand, we will continuously place meter upon meter of PVC pipe.