Hot Tapping

When a pipeline has to stay in service, a hot tap is how you get a new connection into it. 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.

Australian Hot Taps was established in 1996 and was the first company accredited by the Office of Gas Safety, now Energy Safe Victoria, in 1998 to hot tap and stop off live gas lines. We work on gas, water, steam, chemical and process lines in every state and territory.

Call 1800 468 827 with your pipe size, material and what’s in the line, and we will tell you whether it can be tapped.

What pipes can be hot tapped?

Most of them, and the list is longer than people expect. We hot tap 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.

A couple of things we do that nobody else here does: size-on-size tappings on copper water lines from 50mm to 100mm, meaning the branch is the same diameter as the main, and live valve insertion into steel water lines from 100mm to 300mm using the EZ2 valve system. Where the EZ2 can’t be used we can offer balloon or bag-off isolation instead.

Every pipeline gets ultrasonic NDT wall thickness testing before we weld or tap it. Sometimes the answer comes back that the wall’s too thin and the job can’t be done the way you’d hoped. We’d rather find that out with a probe than with a torch.

Hot tapping is also called wet tapping, live tapping, under pressure tapping or UPT. They’re all the same operation.

Can your line be tapped live?

The short version, in one place:

Do you have to shut the system down?

No. Your system stays up the whole time we’re on site, which is the reason most people ring us in the first place.

And the saving isn’t just the outage. A shutdown doesn’t end when the valve closes. You still have to drain, purge, refill, re-pressurise, re-test and recommission, and on a hospital, a data centre or a gas installation that tail can run longer than the outage you planned for. A hot tap removes all of it.

We generally provide a turnkey solution. We attend site, weld or bolt a saddle to the pipe, and install a plugged permanent valve for your use, all completed without shutdown, draining, purging or isolation. We will supply screwed or flanged valves to your specification, or advise you on the option that best suits the job.

How does hot tapping work?

We start with a fitting on the pipe itself: a welded saddle, a full encirclement split tee or a bolt-on tee, with a flanged, butt weld, threaded or other outlet to suit. A valve goes onto that fitting, and we pressure test the whole assembly before anything gets cut.

Once that’s tested, we connect an under-pressure drilling machine to the valve and take our measurements. The machine bores through into the live line without a shutdown and without spilling anything. We retract the cutter, which brings the coupon out with it, close the valve, then depressurise and remove the machine. What’s left is a valve teed into your line, and the line itself never stopped running.

Why Australian Hot Taps

We’ve been doing this since 1996, and we were the first company the Victorian gas regulator accredited to do it. That accreditation came with conditions: a lodged procedure manual, a register of every gas hot tap completed, restrictions on who is permitted to operate, and notice to the regulator before work starts. We’ve worked to that standard ever since.

Our welders are accredited for butt weld, fillet weld and socket weld transmission gas welding procedures, and we can arrange further testing to whichever standard your project requires.

We work across commercial tenancies, hospitals, civil, sporting arenas, defence facilities, mine sites, steelworks, aluminium smelters, schools, universities, data centres and government installations, including heavy industry around Wollongong, Newcastle and Gladstone.

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
• Wall thickness, if you know it
• What is in the line, and at what pressure and temperature
• The branch size you need
• How you get to the pipe. Above ground, in a riser, or buried and needing an excavation
• Any drawings, photos or isolation plans

Call 1800 468 827 or email [email protected]. If you’re not sure whether your line can be tapped, just give us a call, we’ll ask a few questions and let you know.

Where we work

We operate from depots in Bayswater, Victoria and Currumbin Waters, Queensland, and we have clients in all states and territories of Australia as well as the Pacific Islands and New Zealand. We regularly fly in and out to service our clients.

We have pages for the places we get asked about most: Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast, and for the regional work that goes in as a single planned mobilisation, Toowoomba, Cairns and Kalgoorlie. If you are weighing up buying a machine rather than having the tap done, there is more on hot tapping equipment.

Hot tapping is one of ten live pipeline services we provide. If a hot tap isn’t the right method for your situation, we also offer line stopping to isolate a section, pipe freezing where a mechanical isolation isn’t practical, squash offs, live valve insertion, thermowell and instrument installation and live leak repair.

What is in the line?

We hot tap into natural gas, coke gas, chilled water, heating hot water, potable water, condenser water, steam, compressed air, chemical, petrochemical and various waste product lines.

PIPELINES MAY CONTAIN: