Pipe Freezing Brisbane & South East Queensland

We do pipe freezing across Brisbane and south east Queensland, and our Queensland depot at Currumbin Waters is an hour down the motorway. Liquid nitrogen forms an ice plug inside the live line, you get your isolation, and nothing is drained or recommissioned afterwards.

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

Do you come to Brisbane?

Yes. Currumbin Waters is our Queensland depot and Brisbane is a straight run up the motorway from it, so there’s no flight priced into the job. Bayswater in Victoria is the other depot.

What we get asked to freeze in Brisbane

Mostly chilled water and heating hot water ring mains in occupied towers, and hospital plant. The people ringing are usually building managers, mechanical contractors and hospital engineering teams.

There’s usually a valve somewhere, but it’s two floors away or it hasn’t been exercised in years, so closing it takes far more offline than the job needs.

Brisbane jobs often turn into a hot tap as well, because once the line is open people want a valve there permanently rather than another freeze next year. People call for valve installations, replacing a section of pipe, isolating a piece of equipment, terminating a branch, diverting a line, or abandoning one.

How the freeze works

A non-intrusive way of isolating a live line. Liquid nitrogen goes onto a section of pipe, heat is drawn out of whatever is inside, and the contents freeze into a solid plug. Once the freeze is achieved, the plug will hold against very high differential pressures. The pipe itself is left alone, so there’s nothing welded on and nothing to remove afterwards.

The product usually has to stop moving for the plug to form, which is one of the first things we’ll ask you about. The main pipe freezing page has the full detail on materials, contents and what the method gets used for.

Draining a system down costs more than the outage suggests once you total it up. There’s a venting procedure to arrange, fluid to transfer and store somewhere, and treated water and system inhibitors that go down the drain and have to be bought again. On contaminated or volatile product there’s a safety argument too, since nobody has to handle it.

On materials, we freeze carbon steel, stainless, Kunifer, aluminium alloys, nickel alloy, copper based alloys, and both ductile and cast iron. Contents range from water and coolants through to acids, oils, alcohols, paints, liquid food product and sewage.

Is freezing the right method for your line?

Not always, and we’d rather say so on the phone than on site. Freezing suits lines you can’t weld on, spots with no room for a fitting, and short jobs where a permanent tapping point isn’t worth putting in. Where a mechanical isolation is practical, holding the flow back with a stop may suit better. If the isolation point should still be there afterwards, that’s inserting a valve into the live main. And if what you actually want is a new connection rather than an isolation, you want a hot tap. There’s a rundown on a page comparing the methods.

Alongside a freeze in Brisbane, the other one that comes up most is putting a permanent valve in while we’re there.

Things that help us give you a quote

With freezing, what’s in the line matters more than anything else, because the contents actually have to freeze. The rest sharpens the number:

• Pipe size and material
• What’s in the line, and at what temperature and pressure
• Whether the product is still flowing, and whether it can be stopped
• How long the isolation has to hold
• How you get to the pipe, and where in Queensland the site is
• Any drawings or photos

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

Other live pipeline work in Brisbane

We bring the rest of the kit with us. We also do permanent valves put in under pressure, leaks sealed while the line stays up and pressure testing and purging. If a Brisbane job needs more than one of those, doing it on a single visit costs less. Coverage is on where we work.

North of the city is the same run for us, so there is a page for freezing work on the Sunshine Coast and through Moreton Bay as well.

Pipe freezing in Brisbane, at a glance