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By its definition, “Due Diligence” means:  “A comprehensive appraisal of a business undertaken by a prospective buyer, especially to establish its assets and liabilities and evaluate its commercial potential.”  While certain aspects of any property are more important than others, such as its tenant rental income, a hidden yet growing liability for every property is its extensive piping infrastructure.

• Different Piping Systems

Piping layout may be as simple as a small office having limited domestic water and waste service within a 750,000 square foot warehouse, or a 50 story office building of the same square footage containing 25 miles worth of pipe of various types and services.  As the stature of the businesses served raises to higher levels, so do demands for greater comfort controls, more extended hours of operation, and more prestigious surroundings which are often provided at the expense of mechanical upkeep.  The first impression by every visitor to any building is its lobby.  The last quite obviously – the mechanical room, chiller plant, or cooling tower.

• Varying Threats

All piping systems present a different level of threat to a building.  Sanitary waste and vent pipe being at minimum level, and dual temperature piping systems toward the high end.  Total risk is a combination of the type of failure which may occur, pressure within the system, pipe location, age, piping material, type of construction, and the number of floors potentially impacted.  A pinhole leak on the roof condenser water pipe presents almost no threat of property damage, whereas a thread separation at a chill water take-off line to a tenant ceiling A/C unit will typically produce catastrophic results.

A review of this Internet site defines the most common corrosion problems associated with different piping systems, as well as those specific to different types of building properties.  System specific Photo Galleries and Technical Bulletins are also provided.

• Building Age

Age is one criteria relied upon to judge piping condition, with various published schedules of expected service life for different piping systems.  The problem, however, is that the many variables and influences acting upon the pipe are either not considered, not known, or simply ignored.  Older buildings may have had extra heavy pipe installed where newer buildings have thinwall pipe.  The far superior quality of older pipe is not even a factor in assessing pipe condition by most engineering studies, although we have documented it as the reason why some 1960s buildings still remain in outstanding condition.

• Piping System

Every piping system ages differently based upon a variety of generally unknown factors and conditions.  Whereas a domestic water copper piping system can be reasonably expected to provide over 75 years of reliable service, most other piping systems will not.

Open condenser water systems typically produce the greatest threat to operations due to higher corrosion levels, potentially high pressures, and smaller diameter threaded lines.  In fact, most threaded condenser water fittings have less than a 25 year lifespan under even lowest corrosion conditions.  Systems may last 60 years, but have been documented to fail in only two.  More recent piping design layouts favor rust and particulate deposition.  Commonly associated chill water and dual temperature systems experience a corrosion threat to both inside and outside surfaces.

Sanitary waste systems constructed of bell and spigot extra heavy cast iron pipe may provide 85 years or reliability, yet newer buildings constructed of thinner no-hub pipe may only offer 15 years.  The very wide variation in materials used, from galvanized steel to cast iron to ductile iron, further complicate any system assessment.  Closed piping systems typically exhibit no outward signs of a corrosion problem; a massive corrosion problem only realized after taking ownership and being faced with clogged coils throughout the building.  No one will open a wall to check the condition of the chill water or dual temperature risers during a due diligence walk through.

Wet fire systems had once provided virtually unlimited and trouble free service, but with the transition to thinwall schedule 10 pipe, ERW seamed pipe, and often lower quality foreign pipe, any newer building now has this piping system to add to its list of threats.  In fact, for any ultrasonic evaluation of an older property where new piping additions have been installed, significantly higher corrosion activity is found at the newer pipe.

We provide further detail to the most common piping problems, corrosion threats, and areas of interest under System Specific Issues.

• Hidden  Vulnerabilities
  

A typical “walk-through” of a building property prior to purchase is exactly that.  Only the most obvious defects may be noticed, and based upon the large volume of corrosion related problems we find at newly acquired properties, most due diligence inspections are significantly deficient.  Other than a pipe repair clamp, or newly installed pipe of a different color, most corrosion issues will remain hidden from view.  Of course, buckets of rust product, empty chemical treatment drums, rust stained floors, and other such items will indicate a corrosion problem, but are still often overlooked or explained away.  A review of water treatment logs or corrosion coupon reports are often the primary due diligence inspection tool, even though they provide no indication to the condition of the pipe interior.  Corrosion coupons themselves are nearly worthless in determining current corrosion levels, and provide no indication to the system’s corrosion history.

Of course, the general condition of the mechanical rooms themselves is a good indication to the maintenance provided to the piping systems.  Our finding of catch basins fitted under ceiling hung A/C units with hoses leading to bathroom vent lines led one purchaser to back out at the last minute.  In another, a 35 MPY corrosion rate caused by the installation of “green” non-chemical corrosion control for a cooling system at a 3 year old building scared its purchaser away after only 2 hours into our investigation.

• Massive Replacement Costs

Our investigation of newly acquired properties have documented entire piping systems as having reached the end of their life, extensive dual temperature piping systems near failure, condenser water systems with barely 1-2 further years of reliability left.  Yet all were assessed favorably through due diligence efforts.

• Cursory Inspection

In fact, most due diligence investigations are far less than thorough, and rarely provide any tangible assessment of piping condition.  Although always seemingly cooperative, there is also the ever present interest of a seller to minimize any close inspection – especially where problems exist.

© Copyright 2023 – William P. Duncan, CorrView International, LLC