How is it that water in a hose doesn’t build up enough pressure to burst the pipe or hose?

797 views

Through my understanding of water and plumbing, water has a pressure behind it. But how is it that water can be held back under pressure in a hose and it not burst a pipe or the hose?

In: Physics

7 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Your water supply will be pressurised to a certain maximum amount, and should never go above this pressure – this means that once the water in your pipes reach this point, the pressure won’t keep on building and get higher, it just stops at the supply pressure.

And the simple reason why your pipes, hoses and other fittings don’t burst is that they are designed to resist this pressure. When they make a hose they choose how strong it will be based on things like the materials used, the thickness and so on. Make a really flimsy, lightweight hose and it might burst at a normal mains supply, make a really strong equivalent and it may be capable to hold many, many times the pressures it will actually experience. In reality most hoses and fitting will be somewhere in the middle – capable of holding a lot more pressure than they need (to cover people misusing them, faults, etc), but not so overbuilt as to be too expensive.

You are viewing 1 out of 7 answers, click here to view all answers.