Residents of an older downtown high-rise condominium in Chicago had been experiencing issues with brown rusty potable water coming from their faucets. Anytime the pipes were disturbed, a slug of brown, rusty, gritty sediment came through the faucets. In addition to the owners being upset, the maintenance staff had to go to every unit on that riser and clean the faucet aerators. Not a happy situation. Fortunately, this is exactly the problem the Low Pressure Drop (LPD) Magnetic Y-Strainer, was designed to address. In today’s case study an existing Y-Strainer was swapped out for the Metraflex LPD-Mag Y-Strainer. The existing strainer was longer so a short, flanged by groove spool piece was supplied by Metraflex to make up the difference.
In today’s case study an existing Y-Strainer was swapped out for the Metraflex LPD-Mag Y-Strainer. The existing strainer was longer so a short, flanged by groove spool piece was supplied by Metraflex to make up the difference. No piping needed to be reconfigured and the maintenance staff was able to make the change in less than an hour. Figure 2. In addition to the magnet, the LPD Mag strainer has a standard stainless-steel screen to capture nonmagnetic particles. The LPD Mag is the only magnet solution on the market that can be blown down while in-service.
Shortly after installation, the LPD-Mag was blown-down. To see what was being captured we opened the blowdown into a bucket. Open the valve slowly and hold tight to hose! (We didn’t get nearly as soaked the second time!) (Figure 3).
Everything you see in the pictures was previously circulating freely throughout the water system and making its way into residents’ showers, sinks and clogging faucet aerators.
We typically find two categories of particles captured by the LPD-Mag: A fine, talc-like mud and a much bigger gritty sand like particles. The brown talc-like particles pass through the faucet aerators and just look bad. The gritty particles plug up the aerator and need to be physically removed. The LPD Mag captures both.
These particles exist in just about any system, especially older ones. The LPD-Mag is capturing them before they travel to the condo president’s bathroom sink.
The collected water was left to dry out to get an idea of what was really captured by the LPD Mag. You can see in The #1 Figure, rust particles of large and very miniscule sizes.