Recent Changes to North American PVC and PVCO Pressure-Pipe Standards

In North America, municipal pressure-pipe specifications typically require conformance to standards published by two organizations :

1. In Canada, the Canadian Standards Association (CSA)
2. In the United States, the American Water Works Association (AWWA).

While there are related standards written by other organisations, this paper will focus on three standards from CSA and three from AWWA.
CSA include all of their plastic pressure-pipe standards in the “B137 Series of Standards, Thermoplastic Pressure Piping Compendium.” For this discussion, relevant standards include:

1. CSA B137.0, which provides definitions, general requirements, and methods of testing for thermoplastic pressure piping
2. CSA B137.3 for PVC pressure pipe
3. CSA B137.3.1 for molecularly oriented PVC (PVCO) pressure pipe

Late last year, the 2009 edition of the compendium was published. Included were revised B137.0 and B137.3 standards, along with the first-edition of B137.3.1.
Notable among the AWWA standards are three PVC pressure-pipe standards:

1. AWWA C900 for small-diameter PVC pipe
2. AWWA C905 for large-diameter PVC pipe
3. AWWA C909 for molecularly oriented PVC (PVCO) pipe

Over the last three years, all of these standards have been revised: C900 was published in late 2007, the other two in 2010.