Beyond the Wires: A Sustainable Approach to Prestressed Concrete Cylinder Pipe Management

Recently the industry has been emphasizing broken prestressing wires as a basis for the management of Prestressed Concrete Cylinder Pipe (PCCP). The approach includes: evaluating broken wires, establishing a threshold level of broken wires for repair, and repairing only sections that exceed the threshold. While evaluating wire breaks are an important part of PCCP management, it is important to acknowledge additional factors beyond wire breaks. By acknowledging additional condition factors, limitations of wire break assessment, and considering other rehabilitation approaches, there may be a more sustainable PCCP management approach (or combination of approaches). The approach may reduce risk and be more sustainable in terms of costs (current and future). For some areas, the San Diego County Water Authority found the comprehensive rehabilitation approach, steel relining of PCCP, to be more sustainable in terms of costs. In addition, the approach significantly reduced the risk of a pipeline failure. However, in other areas, a localized, as-needed repair approach, such as Carbon Fiber, was more sustainable in terms of costs.