This is a drawing of a water connection request for a large supermarket in Tel Aviv. The request has to come with the drawing. It took three months and a dozen changes for the water company to approve the connection, for which they charged 6,000 dollars. I have a feeling of "Victory", which in my case lasts about half an hour. Now the water company has to lay the pipe, which may take another three months.
5 comments:
Thats an interesting diagram. I was under the impression that Israel used the metric system. The hash marks between the ball check valves and gate valves appear to be metric but the valves themselves appear to be American standard diameters.
A question I've been meaning to ask you but where does Israel source the majority of it's pumps from? Do the larger manufacturers like Flygt, Flowserve, GR, etc have a major distributor presence in Israel or are there actually smaller-mid size Israeli companies that have a bigger share of the market? Are the castings themselves done in Israel or is it all sourced out from China?
I'm not a plumbing expert but if I recall, pipe sizes are always given in inches because when standard pipe sizes were established, the English dominated the world of plumbing. You need to be able to add to existing systems, some of which maybe be 50 years old or more, so even after metric was widely adopted, the English sizes could not be dropped without losing interchangeability.
In plumbing, not only is there a question of pipe sizes, but different pipe threads have been used in different countries and for different applications leading to more nightmares. And some pipes go by inside diameter, some by outside, so the whole thing is a big nightmare.
K
Sacre bleu! Metric pipe sizes are pretty much universal today outside of Anglophone nations. Pipe threads too have long since been standardized. Any mechanical engineering textbook will have a table of standard English/Metric equivalent thread pitches, depths, etc in an appendix somewhere.
In Israel we are using the English (inches) units for large pipes. For small distribution pipes like PEX and SP millimeters are being used. Threading is not used anymore, mostly there are HDPE pipes electronically welded.
The valves and accesories are all American standard because they are mostly American. For example, 4" backflow valves are Wilkins. There are no local competition.
Regarding pumps, for sewage pumps I always specify Flygt which are the best by far. But the law says that I have to accept something of equal value שווה ערך in Hebrew. So the clients can buy similar brands. I think in Israel the Italian pumps are the most popular. In general, Italian machinery dominate in Israel. In some industries like olive oil, pasta, bakery, restaurants, etc, they are monopoly.
Pipes are all local manufacture. I tried to import Turkish sewage pipes which are half price, but the Standard Institute would not certify them (that is, they required visits of delegations to the factory, expensive tests, etc.) so in practice it was impossible. About 60% of the market is government or municipal, so they cannot buy pipes or accessories that dont have the Standards Institution mark of approval.
Regarding Israeli pumps, there are several factories like Siniaver, HaMenia, etc. but they cannot compete and are dying.
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