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Maintenance
Properly designed and installed, plastic piping systems require little on-going maintenance. Plastic pipe is resistant to most ordinary chemicals and because it is non-conducting it is not susceptible to galvanic corrosion or electrolysis.
Plastic pipe is immune to attack by, and provides no host nutrients for, bacterial or fungal growth. It is impervious to insect attack and less prone to rodent attack than other piping systems because of its leak-free characteristics.
In environments typical of gas distribution service, plastic pipe is either naturally immune to, or adequately protected against, chemical or physical aging (the loss of strength or performance properties with time).
Under certain conditions of temperature, stress, and chemical attack, polymers can be subject to a phenomenon called slow crack growth. Today’s plastic piping materials are designed to minimize the possibility of slow crack growth over time, and there are currently over forty different tests for this used in the plastic industry – ASTM lists several.
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