Why Municipalities Tap into the Water Supply with Service Saddles

Why Municipalities Tap into the Water Supply with Service Saddles

The water service lateral is the city’s way of bringing water access to buildings or homes. In fact, it takes a lot of parts to successfully get this resource to travel all the way from point A to its final destination. While surrounding the water main, a service saddle is the starting place to making water work on the service lateral.

Simply put, the service saddle is a product comprising a structure that fully encompasses a pipe and an outlet boss used to attach a corporation stop to a water main to make a service line connection. This part can be installed in either the northern or southern water service lateral and is accompanied with the following advantages:

• Attaches to almost any pipe
• Better sealing thread capability than direct tap
  • More sealing threads
  • Larger size tap capability for small pipe sizes
  • Threads created in controlled manufacturing environment
    • Proper gaging of threads
    • Controlled threading tooling ensures proper threads form
• Allows use of drilling machine, eliminating the need to thread the main
• Minimizes stress on corporation stop and pipe

The alternative to using a service saddle is a direct tap. However, this route is only acceptable if there is adequate wall thickness, which means a minimum of 3-4 full threads of engagement. Pipe diameter, wall thickness, and tap size all affect the ability to reach 3-4 full threads. Direct tap is not recommended on PVC but, for all other pipe materials, it’s suggested to contact the pipe supplier to verify if direct tap is acceptable.

Service saddles bring another option for municipalities to make convenient, dependable service line connections on water mains. Municipalities choose this route as it minimizes stress on the corporation stop and pipe, along with the fact that it can provide better sealing capabilities than a direct tap. To learn more about service saddles, contact A.Y. McDonald by calling 1-800-AY-CARES, taking the ‘Service Saddles’ AYU course, or filling out a contact us form on aymcdonald.com.