My method for repairing a leak in poly pipe

[Frank S]

Our well is about 500 feet from my water tower where our potable water is stored. Currently the well is only used for irrigating the garden I have a 3000-gallon storage tank elevated on a tower by the well water is pumped into it then a pressure pump sends it to the garden. Eventually I will complete an adequate filtration and recirculating system to remove enough of the minerals and gypsum making the water potable enough to be stored in our house water system.
Thats the background of the well.

The 1" poly pipe is preexisting to our living here and there are a few connections in the length I don't know if they had to buy the pipe in 100-to-150-foot coils or if it has broken from time to time. I suspect maybe gophers or the former. Anyway, this summer the pipe developed a leak and I lost 1000s of gallons of water. before the evidence of the leak was known.

I dug up the pipe to find a section that had 3 splices, in 2 feet this is what 1 of the splices looked like and the source of the leak.
the pipe had split this indicated to me that the splice inside was installed when the pipe was cold weakening it and it may have been fine and apparently was for many years but when I pressed the well back into service this summer my delivery pressure caused the pipe to split.

To repair the leak, I cut out the section with the splices and made 2 new splices Like this
I used a heat gun to slightly soften the pipe inserted the splice and instead of using a hose clamp I captured the splice with a compression splice fitting normally used on steel pipe.



Properly tightened the compression fitting does a much better job of securing the splice than a hose clamp

I then wrapped the splice connection in waterproof 10 mil 2" wide vinyl pipe wrap tape to protect the steel fitting from moisture in the dirt

Completed repair waiting for the next break to show up. Hopefully many years from now