On-Line Pipe Repair: A Complete Guide

When a pipe starts leaking, every drip is costing you money. Then comes the costly repairs as you have to shut down the system while the professionals take care of the pipe repair. What if there was a way to get the leak fixed fast and while the system was still running?

That’s where online pipe repair comes in. The various methods of closing off these leaks are done while keeping your system running. The leaks can be closed off with epoxy sleeves or a carbon fiber lining!

What is involved in these methods of pipe repair? Which method is right for your leak? Read on to learn all about online pipe repair!

Carbon Fiber

An ideal solution for equipment repairs, carbon fiber’s high strength-to-weight ratio allows for far more flexibility in its applications than steel. Carbon fiber is also seventy percent lighter and steel and forty percent lighter than aluminum, overall carbon fiber is a low-mass material. It is a long-lasting solution that handles most, if not all, issues you throw at it.

One of carbon fiber’s biggest draws is corrosion resistance. It’s best to mix carbon fiber with epoxy for repairs, as using aluminum will open your repair to galvanic corrosion. When mixed with epoxy, the mixture’s resistance is determined by the epoxy and not the carbon fiber. This is a huge advantage when making repairs to leaky pipes or when making tank repairs.

Epoxy Resin

Also called Cured In Place, epoxy resins are used to repair pipes in place. A tube of light-weight fabric is soaked in an epoxy resin, then using an access point, is pulled into a damaged pipe, then inflated. The tube is left to harden, essentially creating a new pipe inside the damaged one.

Running new pipes from inside the old ones is a technique that has been around for over forty years, having been invented by Eric Wood of Insituform Technologies in 1971. Since its inception, CPP has become a staple of pipe repair all over the world. The technologies involved are now within the public domain.

Pipe Patching

More suited for do-it-yourself home repairs, pipe patching can be done with a kit from your local hardware store. A quick and dirty alternative, you can patch it with a section of an old inner tube and some C-clamps. While Not recommended for use in an industrial setting, it should work fine for intrepid home repair gurus.

Pipe Freezing

Using liquid CO2 at -110 degrees can freeze a plugin a pressurized system to allow for a pipe repair. The ice plug formed is strong, up to 7,000 psi, so nothing will get through while you’re working. Pipe freezing is a great option to repair sprinkler systems or similar smaller gauge pipes.