How to bend lead pipe

[MarkSmith]

Hi,

My lead watermain is on its way out - new MDPE pipe installed, waiting for the water board to inspect and connect - but it's not going to happen for a few weeks due to their backlog.

In the mean time I could do with getting on with some building work in the vicinity of the old pipe, which would mean moving it around a bit. How much is it ok to move/bend lead pipe without special tools etc? Is there a technique? Obviously I don't want it to spring a leak and I also don't want it to kink so that water can't flow, but at the same time it's going to be gone in a few weeks so it just has to last until then.

Thanks!
-Mark

 

[landyandy]

My advice would be to leave it alone until you have your new supply sorted.

Andy

 

[MarkSmith]

Thanks for the point of view Andy.

In case anyone stumbles across this thread in the future, wondering the same thing, I did bend the pipe out of the way very gently and gingerly, and it was OK.

Now that the new watermain has been connected I have removed the old lead pipe and I am pretty confident it would have stood up to a great deal of bending without either kinking or splitting. It's pretty flexible and resilient.