When building PVC pipe systems, whether your doing new installations or replacing older systems, the space you get to work in is often at a premium. You can spend hours trying to fit your new system in the space allotted and find your always short of room to do the things you'd like, such as adding service unions or valves.

Today, I use a computer with a software package called AutoCad that costs $ 3000.00 along with an engineering program add-on from the pipe Representative that allows me to draw the system to scale. It tells me how much pipe and how many of each fitting are on the drawing, how much it costs and how much it weighs with water in it !

You get to go to Hugh M Woods or General Hardware with your pencil sketch and hope they have the fittings you need or the fittings you can get to make up the fittings you needed. With some advanced planning and some ingenuity, you can get what you need and have a better chance of putting it in the space you have.

For the piping projects I do, which are mainly chemical feed systems such as Chlorine, Sulfur-Dioxide, Fluoride or Coagulants, I use Schedule 80 PVC pipe and fittings. I also do my small booster pump stations this way.

I do not use schedule 40 PVC because I feel it's too light physically to start with and it won't tolerate the chemicals as long as the thicker-walled schedule 80 pipe. It takes a better lickin' as it were; more of the abuse you'd see in a plant with people moving things around and bumping and kicking it.

First of all comes the planning! Find you local pipe supplier and get a catalogue that has pictures of the fittings available and their measurements. It will also have chemical resistance charts to help you with selection of intermediate tubing and tube fittings for the final flexible connections to your equipment.

I buy my Spears PVC fittings and tube fittings from the suppliers below, depending on stock availability and where I'm coming from ! They are both very good companies to deal with, but each has a slightly different inventory and are usually complementary in filling a complex order. Both will provide you with catalogues that should have the info I mentioned. Ask also for any engineering manuals they might have !!