Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Today we bought a length of 150mm stormwater pipe to use as the outer standpipes in our first AP system here. We bought stormwater as opposed to DWV as it was 20 per length cheaper (yep, tightarses) When we cut the pipe we noticed it has 4 layers in it's makeup. Outer and inner are white the same looking as dwv or pressure pipe, the inner layer is bright blue
Does anyone know what this means? Obviously we are going to drill lots of holes in the pipe and cut it into 40cm sections so the blue will be exposed to the water. If anyone knows what this blue layer is/means it would be appreciated, also some advice on whether we just burned $70 and should go get a length of the dwv.
Thanks folks

you might want to be careful Stu, alot of the "sandwich" pipes/conduits are made with a foam filling(to keep the price down) made up mostly of recycled materials......didnt read all of this but it might tell you more about its construction sandwich pipe

I sell the sandwich conduit for electrical cables etc, alot of my customers use it coz its cheaper

maybe you can smear a silicone"barrier" over the inner layers?

Thanks BK, thought of the silicone barrier but it wouldn't work because of all the 6mm holes needed grrr.

sounds like I am gonna need to break out the wallet again doh

what about poking some of those dripper spike thingies into the holes?

I have to cut 10 of these, we have 20 beds all up, and hundred s of holes to drill, so if the pipe is dodgy, we may be better off just getting the DWV.....

Stu - this is a timely post of yours because I was going to post something similar - but speaking of the existence of lead in pipes.

I know we have been over this before and there have been different answers given, but I have it on reasonable authority that a lot of conduit definitely contains lead and that also a lot of pipe does. It has been stated to me that if I want lead free pipe - I would need to specify that.

This concerns me, because as with many others I have in my system 90mm stormwater, various pressure pipes and 100mm DWV. God knows what has and hasn't go lead in it.

But then again, is DWV food safe, considering it is meant for drains, waste and vents...?

Beat you to that EB - I am dubious as to it's safety. This is also a problem in relation to my rainwater connections - because water passes through DWV to get to tanks (once they are installed that is ). Many people now use DWV for this type of purpose, because particularly if buried it is less likely to buckle when place under some pressure than stormwater which is very thin walled.

opens that whole can of worms again doesn't it.... more pipe I think....

Damn it... only just..... Well, I'm working on the assumption that the food out of my system has no pesticides/herbicides/chemical fertilisers, etc etc, so if there's any risk at all from DWV it's minimal when you consider the option of commercial mass produced stuff..

With electrical conduit..... the orange conduit definitely has a lead content... not sure of the grey stuff.....

There's always the "white" Telstra conduit.... but I don't know about that either.... and it's weird dimensions........

All the 100mm DWV i've been getting lately is also foam sandwhich

I've not seen the foam sandwich pipe yet..

the vinidex link won't open up for me

J go on to the pipa site below