Hot Tap and Line Stops

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<<Hot Taps and Line Stops are “under pressure” drilling operations, meaning that a pipe or other pressure vessel is drilled into, while the system remains in service, and under pressure. There are many reasons to do this, and by the same token, there are many good reasons to not do this, if a system can be shut down, in order to perform the drilling operation. A good example of a need to perform a hot tap, is to connect a service (for example a new homeowner needs water service connected to a system serving many others). Other people would be inconvenienced if the system were to be shut down, depressurized, connected, sanitized?, brought back online, all to connect one service. For this reason, it is very common to perform a hot tap. (A hot tap is commonly assumed to mean drilling into a pipe that is live, it may, or may not actually be “hot”).

This paper was written as an aid, to those technical persons, who know little or nothing about hot taps and line stops. There are quite a few different publications, technical articles, manuals, and other printed matter that delve into the details of various aspects of hot taps and line stops, this short paper is intended to simply hit the high spots.>> Received on Fri Jan 12 02:20:00 2007