Are Nails the Culprit?

Overview

Objectives/Goals This project is a two-part sequel to last year#s project, which showed that copper levels in my mountain house water were unsafe. The first part#s purpose is to see if the utility had kept their promise to lower copper levels. The second part is to see if nails discovered pounded into the copper pipes are why the copper levels always peaked after running water for 60 seconds. Methods/Materials Part One: Measure pH and copper levels in water samples taken every 20 seconds for 5 minutes. Repeat the next month. Take peak copper level water samples (60 seconds) on following visits to measure acidity and copper levels until utility fixes problem. Part Two: Test how nails affect copper corrosion by putting different types of nails into copper pipe segments with water from the mountain house. Take daily pH and copper level samples for 7 days. Also do calculations to see if nails are one minute away from faucet. Results Part One: Peak copper levels declined from 3 ppm in August to less than 0.5 ppm in October after the utility district began treating the water. Part Two: The bronze nail increased the corrosion, but the aluminum, electroplated, steel, hot dipped, and house nail all decreased the copper levels inside the tubes Conclusions/Discussion Part One: The utility finally kept its promise and reduced copper levels. Part Two: The discovered steel nails were not the copper corrosion culprits, but they did distort the copper tests with iron oxide. Only bronze nails increased copper corrosion.

Competition history

• CSEF 2007 Chemistry · Entry J0511

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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