Why nobody talks about galvanized pipe failures in old basements

I was working on a reno in a 1950s house near downtown Portland last month. Everything looked fine on the surface, but when I cut into a section of the main water line, the inside was almost completely clogged with rust and mineral buildup. The pipe walls had corroded down to almost nothing in spots, maybe 1/16 inch thick. I had to replace about 40 feet of pipe because one small leak would have flooded the whole basement. Has anyone else run into this with old galvanized plumbing, or did I just get the worst house in the neighborhood?

2 comments

2 Comments

brooke_murray12d ago

Are you sure it was actually as bad as you think? I've cut into a ton of old galvanized pipe in basements around here and most of the time the inside is just a little rough, not completely clogged. Half the time the buildup is just hard water scale, not rust eating through the metal. You might have just hit a weird spot where the pipe was laid in some old cinder fill or had a bad section near a joint. Did you actually test the wall thickness with a gauge or were you just guessing based on the crud?

davidshah11d ago

Tell us @brooke_murray, did you actually use a gauge or not?