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blew out my house instead of my irrigation system

cyn

Unregistered

1

Friday, October 8th 2010, 1:39pm

blew out my house instead of my irrigation system

I own a Condo and my sprinkler system is "winterized" by a landscaping company. This past week a man came to blow out the system and he did something wrong - apparently did not isolate the sprinkler from the rest of the house and he blew air into my house water line.

My Dad says he doesn't see how this could happen - he thought the water from the house line would go into the truck (containing the air compressor - my description), if you left the valve to the main waterline open.

I realized what was happening when I flushed a toilet (while he was attached to the system and blowing in air) and the water roared out of a tube (where the fresh water pumps in) in the top of the tank creating a lot of noise. Scared the heck out of me!

I quickly turned of the valve and went out to speak with the man. He apologized saying he must have gotten some air in the lines. Understatement. We ran water in the sink until it stopped chocking and sputering.

Anyway my question is has anyone experienced this before? Would you anticipate damage to the water lines in the house. My house is a couple years old so every thing is pretty new.

The landscaping company simply stated that there would be no damage due to that but, honestly they are biased. I don't see any evidence of leaks but my fear is that something could be leaking and I wont know about it until is is to late.

I would also like to hear from the experts what do you think about the training this person received to perform this job. Would you call someone who did this incompetent? I did! Not to his face, though Is this a relatively easy process if you are trained to do it.

Thank you for any information I am feeling like I am just being run over by my HOA and the landscaping company on this issue.

Sincerely,

Cynthia

Wet_Boots

Supreme Member

Posts: 4,102

Location: Metro NYC

2

Friday, October 8th 2010, 4:15pm

Vacation houses get winterized just like sprinkler systems. Don't worry.

Central Irrigation

Supreme Member

Posts: 364

Location: Central Minnesota

3

Friday, October 8th 2010, 9:12pm

Nothing to worry about.



There was a gentleman in Minnesota that was blowing out a city owned sprinkler system that had been tapped off of the Main city supply line. It's still unsure how it happened, but he ended up blowing air into the city's main line for a good hour and a half (according to one of the nearby residents), before he realized what he was doing. Several neighbors contacted the city complaining of air coming out of their kitchen faucets. The city imposed some severe penalties on the company responsible for the mishap, being that every fire hydrant in the city needed to be flushed, and a city wide press release was issued.

HooKooDooKu

Supreme Member

Posts: 683

4

Tuesday, October 12th 2010, 12:39pm

The real issue sounds like an irrigation system that was not properly installed. After all, aren't backflow preventers supposed to prevent just such a thing?

But in any case, I doubt the air compressor did any damage to the house plumbing (physically speaking). The pressures the air compressor should have been operating at are lower than typical water pressures. The real danger is from the air compressor (such as lubricating fluids) contaminating your potable water to the home (hence in the above example, the city had to flush the lines). At a minimum, you should do what you can to flush all the water lines in your house (such as running faucets for several minutes) to insure any contaminates that were blown into your plumbing pipes has been flushed out.

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