Break Rate Analysis Tool

This Break Rate Analysis Tool was developed by the Southwest Environmental Finance Center (SW EFC) to compare annual main breaks from your system to the US/Canadian average break rates for 7 pipe materials published by Dr. Steven Folkman in 2012 and 2018. These studies clearly demonstrate that the average failure rates for different pipe materials vary dramatically, from a low of 2.6 failures/100 miles/year for polyvinyl chloride (PVC) to a high of 34.8 failures/100 miles/year for cast iron (CI) in the most recent study.