Water Should Stay In Your Pipes
The pipes in your home perform a vital function. Without them, fresh water wouldn’t be piped into your faucets and showers, and waste water wouldn’t be carried away. They may not be the most visible portions of your home, but the rest of your home would be a very different environment if indoor plumbing wasn’t tucked away in the walls and floors.
However, when you stop and think about it, water pipes undertake a major responsibility for your home, nonstop, every day of the year. Many materials, including concrete, are porous, meaning they can admit water. Pipes designed for the task are specifically made to be water tight, but that doesn’t mean that they will always remain so. If you find you’re getting water in your basement and the location is in the vicinity of your pipes there may be a problem with them.
Why Pipes Leak
There are a number of reasons why pipes leak, although in most cases, a major contributing factor is age. If your home is 15 years older or more, there is a chance that some of the pipes may be vulnerable to damage. Corrosion is the most common cause of pipe failure. There’s no one reason for a pipe to corrode and many factors can be involved. The quality of the water itself may play a role, or the PH levels of the water, over years, may have a corrosive effect.
Even the velocity of water flowing through a pipe can eventually damage that pipe, if water changes its speed significantly enough. Sharp corners in a pipe system may be enough to increase the speed of water, and water itself is a natural force for erosion. Given enough time traveling at speed, it can literally wear away a section of pipe eventually causing it to weaken and fail.
There are many reasons why a home would leak water into the basement, it’s possible that your water pipes themselves may be a cause.