We often hear the term, look at the big picture; nothing could be more accurate when designing infrastructure that needs to last for as long as possible, especially when it comes to water and wastewater buried in the ground. In Laurens, South Carolina, engineers were tasked with building a pipeline to that will feed to the new water treatment facility.
Initially they considered PVC because it seems to be the better choice as it’s cheaper. But once they did some more investigating they realized, that while it may have been a cheaper material choice up front, it was not in the long run.
The engineers began to look at life cycle costs of the products. This covers everything from pipe production costs, installation, operation and maintenance, and end of life costs. When comparing the timelines alone the life cycle is 50 years for PVC, and 100 years for U.S. Pipe ductile iron pipe, so immediately there is major difference in service life.
