Hot Tap Water in Urayasu

The city of Urayasu in Chiba prefecture suffered some pretty serious damage due to soil liquefaction that took place during the March 11th earthquake. Pipes were damaged and many households were left without running water.

Now that the tap water is flowing again, there is a new problem. The water is too freaking hot:

Residents don’t need to use water heaters because water is already very hot when it comes out of the tap. Some people consider the water too hot for bathing, so they fill up their tubs and let it sit until it cools down. Anyone who wants to drink a cool glass of water will need to fill a bottle with tap water and then place it in their refrigerator for a while.

The problem lies with the temporary pipes installed after the earthquake. The city’s pre-earthquake water mains were about 1-meter underground. The new temporary pipes are about 30-centimeters underground. Because the pipes are closer to the surface, the heat of the sun is causing them to become hot.

Unfortunately, there is no quick solution to the problem. Residents will have to wait until the city government builds a new sewage system, which will hopefully be completed by the end of this year.

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http://www.facebook.com/rallegretti Rob Allegretti

Hop -> Hot?
http://www.facebook.com/rallegretti Rob Allegretti

This sounds like a problem with steam pipes getting cross-linked with water pipes or geothermal leaks or something. The sun shouldn’t be able to heat water, in a pipe, a foot underground, to uncomfortable bathing levels. Unless it runs near a volcano…
http://twitter.com/inchiki_gaijin 武恋伝

Rob: You might be surprised. I live in an area where the water pipes were not affected by the earthquake, yet the water is hot enough that I can take a shower without turning on my water heater and not notice the difference.
Lord Metroid

That is awesome, free hot water. I wish I could have hot water for free!
lovely

glad you changed the headline – i was getting ready to move to urayasu to get me some of them hops in the water…….beer
flowby

Another BIG plus for solar.
Level3osaka

If the pipes are 30cm below a concrete or pavement surface, and such surfaces can easily hit 50C or even 60C in summer sun, then you get some pretty hot water, especially if nobody uses it much and it just sits there soaking up the heat. Tap water reaches a not-cold 28C even in a normal system in Osaka in summer, and the first couple minutes from the tap are even warmer due to heat from the building conducting to the pipes. Gotta respect the survivors in Tohoku! Will it get cold enough in winter to worry about these temporary pipes freezing?

http://twitter.com/inchiki_gaijin 武恋伝

In Urayasu… probably not… though that certainly makes this year a bad candidate for a cold snap!

http://www.sakatland.com/blog Sakat

Last year was in Kasai it was the same… I couldn’t have a fresh shower during August.
Bernician

Isnt hot tap water just part of living in Japan?
http://www.recoverybull.com recover files

Hope, soon the problem get solved as people must be having
lot of problem due to it.
Mike

The owner of the Panamint Springs Resort in Death Valley, CA had the same problem when he took over the property: a five-mile-long pipeline carried water from a spring in the mountains…five miles of all-black pipeline. It came out of the cold water tap at near-boiling temperatures, at least during the day. The previous owner just took his shower in the morning, when the pipeline had cooled off overnight. The new owner preferred an evening shower, but did not prefer being par-boiled in the shower stall. After some thought, his solution was to turn the gas off to the hot-water tank, and use it as a cold-water storage tank – in effect, a cooling tower. Worked great.

Hot Tap Water in Urayasu

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