Let’s Take a Second Look: HDPE Piping for Large Diameter Applications

High density polyethylene (HDPE) piping has been around since the late 1950s; however, it was not until the 1990s that its use became more widespread in large diameter pipes for municipal water and sewer applications. As its usage has become more common practice, coupled with improvements in the technology, the more recent resins (the building block of HDPE pipe) being produced have created a HDPE pipe product with thinner walls of a certain pressure rating than the previous resin types. In addition, newer technologies in the production process can now produce overall thicker wall HDPE pipe. These two advancements, the strength of the underlying resin and the ability to make overall thicker wall HDPE pipe during the extrusion process, now permit the industry to produce even larger diameter HDPE pipes at higher pressure rating classes that were previously unavailable.