Case Study of The Week, 8.22.2011

Water pipe should last as least 50 years, and if it doesn’t, the manufacturer should pay dearly.

That’s what smart cities across the country are writing into their engineering specifications, and the world’s largest manufacturer of plastic pipe, JM Eagle, couldn’t agree more.  JM Eagle is the first and only pipe manufacturer to offer a 50-year warranty on its AWWA PVC and PE engineered water products*, and cover all associated replacement costs.

“Most pipe manufacturers, if they have a warranty at all, cover only the cost of the pipe itself,” says Dan Dietrich P.E., quality assurance manager at JM Eagle.  “Smarter cities are taking into account the actual price tag when the pipe fails, and writing stipulations in their product specs that make sure these expenses are covered.” 

Cities already know that replacing the pipe itself represents only a small portion of the true cost of failure.  According to Dietrich, factoring in labor, equipment, backfilling, earthmoving, damage and more, the cost of the actual pipe averages only about 25 percent of total replacement costs.

Winchester, Ky., is one such city whose Municipal Utilities department has mandated language written into its specs to include a 50-year warranty and ensure that all associated costs of replacement are covered.  They read:  “All water transmission and distribution lines shall carry a minimum 50-year warranty from the manufacturer.  This warranty must cover all manufacturing defects and any associated costs for repairs to a damaged area caused by the defect.”

It’s a bold move for this city.  It is now getting pushback from other manufacturers that don’t offer a warranty as part of their business negotiations, which any producer can.  Fifty-year warranties like JM Eagle’s, in fact, are standard in the geothermal market.

 “It has definitely raised awareness for JM Eagle’s warranty,” says Trent Hertzfeld of Utility Solutions, a rep agency for the company, who says that other manufacturers who don’t back their products are trying to talk it down.   “This is our standard warranty.  We bid jobs all day like that because we always stand behind our products.” 

Other pipe makers that say they offer a warranty fall short of JM Eagle’s promise.  One PE manufacturer pro-rates the warranty after five years to limit its liability to only a fraction of the original purchase price of the pipe.  It also fails to cover related costs of replacement.  Other manufacturers limit their warranties to one, three or five years.   Only JM Eagle offers a municipality confidence that its water infrastructure will be guaranteed to last a minimum of 50 years.

Consideration of the product performance and its warranty is especially critical when cities go shopping for their pipe amongst the various pipe materials.  According to a study by the National Research Council of Canada, ductile iron water pipe—for which no manufacturer extends a significant warranty—experiences 9.5 breaks per 100 km.  PVC experiences 0.7 breaks per 100 km.

“PVC’s cost-effectiveness and sustainability are important qualities that city and local lawmakers should be considering—and taxpayers should be demanding,” says Bruce Hollands, executive director of the Uni-Bell PVC Pipe Association.  “Local governments must first repair outdated procurement practices before repairing our critical infrastructure.”

Many times plastic pipe is brought to the job to replace severely corroded iron pipe only a decade or two old—at taxpayer expense.  This was the case in Allen, Texas, where 7,400 feet of 18-inch DR 11 JM Eagle plastic polyethylene pipe was slip-lined to replace a 24-inch ductile iron water line installed in the 1990s that was too broken to attempt to fix. 

In another case, JM Eagle C909 PVC pipe was brought in to replace 80 feet of a reinforced concrete cylinder water line that was installed in 2002 outside Cleburne, Texas.  The concrete pipe’s cathodic protection to prevent corrosion had failed and the pipe had already been repaired once.  By 2008, the stretch of pipe had completely failed and, due to its dangerous location under three high-pressure steel gas lines, had to be replaced. (JM Eagle representatives, at (800) 621-4404, can answer more questions about plastic pipe and its warranties.) In the unlikely event JM Eagle pipe had failed, these cities would not have had a problem.

“It’s important for fiscally prudent municipalities to mandate the selection of pipe that protects them from future costs in the event of failure,” says JM Eagle’s Dietrich.  “All pipe products are not the same, and neither are their warranties.”

*see www.jmeagle.com/warranty