Plumbers in Coldspring, Texas

What a flood actually does to a crossing

Rarely a clean break. What happens is scour: fast water pulls material out of the creek bed, the cover over the pipe reduces from three feet to nothing, and a line that was buried is now lying in the channel. It is still working, so nobody notices, and then it takes a direct hit from a log in the next storm.

The second thing is undermining at the banks, where the soil either side washes back and leaves a span of unsupported pipe. Plastic pipe will bow and eventually crack at the point it is still held. The failure appears weeks after the weather that caused it, which is why people rarely connect the two.

For a sewer line the consequence is worse than for water, since a broken sewer is discharging into the creek and continues doing so until someone notices the flow at the house has changed, which it may not.

Boring under, or bridging over

Three ways to get a pipe across, and the right answer is nearly always the first.

Bored well below the bed. Deep enough that scour cannot reach it, with no joints inside the crossing. It costs the most on the day and it is the one that stops being a topic of conversation afterwards.

Trenched through the bed with proper cover and protection. Sleeved, weighted or encased, with the bed restored so water is not directed at the line. Cheaper, and it depends entirely on how the creek behaves in a real flood.

Carried over on a bridge or a crossing structure. Common for water lines on private drives, and it puts the pipe in the air where it needs insulating for freezes and protecting from debris. An attractive option where rock makes boring expensive, and a poor one where the crossing itself goes under in a big rain.

Whichever is used: no joints in the channel, isolation valves on both banks, and a record of the route with photographs and measurements from something that will still be there in ten years. A tracer wire on a plastic line costs almost nothing while the trench is open and saves a day of searching later.

After the water drops, and how we work

Walk it once the creek is back down. Look for pipe visible in the bed, for scour holes at either bank, and for anything that used to be buried and is not. Then check the house side: a pressure drop that only shows when a distant tap runs, a meter turning with nothing on, or a wet patch that follows the line rather than the ground.

We locate, camera, repair and reroute crossings, and where a line has been exposed twice in five years we will usually recommend boring it properly rather than reburying it a third time.

Coldspring, Shepherd, Point Blank and Oakhurst are all within our patch, and we know which roads to avoid after a heavy week.