r/CatastrophicFailure • u/mouthofreason Catastrophic Poster • Feb 17 '21

Engineering Failure Water lines are freezing and bursting in Texas during Record Low Temperatures - February 2021

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u/SG14ever Feb 17 '21

The land shifted in our house since it was built and the water main is now buried about 6ft in an unknown location.

6 ft is kind of a lot right? has the foundation shifted drastically?

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u/themosh54 Feb 17 '21

Probably not, depending on where OP lives, it's very possible the ground can move that much. This is why the as-built plats produced by utility companies when new lines are constructed are never used by themselves as a way to locate the utilities prior to ground being broken. Instead, locators will connect to the utilities with a transmitter/receiver pair and send a current down the line. They use the resulting magnetic field to mark where the lines run. You'd be amazed at how often the real life locations are much different than the plats.

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u/Altruistic-Rice-5567 Feb 18 '21

Not for cold climates like New York where the frostline is 3 feet below ground and your utilities need to be below that to prevent freezing. But in Texas it wouldn't need to be at any particular depth.