Hot Tapping Sydney

We do hot tapping work in Sydney and across New South Wales. We weld or bolt a fitting onto the live line, mount a valve on it, then cut through the valve while the line is still under pressure. Nothing gets shut down and nothing gets spilled.

Call 1800 468 827 with your pipe size, material and what’s in the line, and we’ll tell you whether it suits.

Do you cover Sydney?

We don’t have a Sydney depot. Being straight about it: we travel in, and we plan the job around a single mobilisation rather than turning up twice. The more you can tell us up front, the tighter and cheaper the visit.

We have clients in all states and territories of Australia as well as the Pacific Islands and New Zealand, and we regularly fly in and out to service them.

What is hot tapping?

A hot tap is how you get a new connection into a pipeline that has to stay in service. The attachment can be welded or mechanically fastened as a bolt-on tee, with flanged, butt weld, threaded or other outlet configurations. A valve is mounted to the fitting and the whole assembly is pressure tested before anything is cut.

There is more detail on the method on the main hot tapping page.

What pipes can be hot tapped?

Most of them. Steel, stainless, copper, PVC, HDPE, PE, cast iron, ductile iron, cast and ductile cement lined, AC and most other pipeline materials, in sizes from 12mm upwards.

The taps go into natural gas, coke gas, chilled water, heating hot water, potable water, condenser water, steam, compressed air, chemical, petrochemical and various waste product lines. Every pipeline gets ultrasonic NDT wall thickness testing before we weld or tap it, and if it is too thin to weld on we will tell you before we start.

Is this the right method for your line?

Not always, and we would rather say so before anyone books a crew.

If you need the flow held back rather than a new connection, that is line stopping, and it usually goes in through the tap. Where nothing can be welded onto the pipe, pipe freezing is the alternative. There is a comparison of all of them on which method do I need.

Approvals in New South Wales

Live gas work needs the relevant state regulator’s authorisation, assessed job by job, and the approval lead time is usually what moves a programme rather than the work itself. Ask us early rather than late.

Where the Sydney work has been

Less history here than in Melbourne and it would be silly to pretend otherwise. The work has been the same shape though: Royal North Shore Hospital, and CBD towers including Australia Square and the AMP Centre at 50 Bridge Street, where a live connection was cheaper than the outage. Star City is on the list as well, and so is the Sydney Cricket Ground.

Most of our New South Wales work arrives through contractors who operate in both states, so if your mechanical or plumbing contractor has used us in Melbourne, there is a reasonable chance they already know how we work.

What helps us quote it

Pipe size, material and wall thickness do most of the work in a hot tap price. Anything else you have just sharpens it:

• Pipe size and material
• What is in the line, and at what pressure and temperature
• What you are trying to achieve, and your window
• How you get to the pipe, and where in New South Wales the site is
• Any drawings or photos

Call 1800 468 827 or email [email protected]. If you are not sure whether this suits your line, just give us a call, we will ask a few questions and let you know.

Other live pipeline work in New South Wales

We travel for the rest of it too: hot tapping, line stopping, pipe freezing, live valve insertion, live gas diversions, leak repair under pressure, thermowell installation and testing and purging. If a Sydney job needs more than one, it is usually cheaper on one visit. See also where we work.

Hot Tapping in Sydney, at a glance