Light purple or lilac is for recycled/reclaimed water. The Irvine Ranch Water District, a long-time proponent of water conservation, pioneered the use of purple piping which has become the international symbol for recycled water.
Purple pipe systems provide recycled water for industrial, landscape irrigation, or other demands not requiring potable-quality water, via a dedicated delivery system that is completely separated from the system used to deliver potable water.
Every time you spot a purple pipe, you can be sure recycled water is flowing through it! Similarly, when you see a purple recycled water sign, it shows that recycled water is used at that location for a specific purpose.
What is recycled water? You can easily identify recycled water as it has its own distribution system which is purple, so when you see purple piping out in the community the water being used is recycled.
Purple ducting: Motorway Communications
Often seen alongside motorways and A-roads, purple ducts are used for wires leading to emergency phones, traffic monitoring cameras and speed cameras.
Polyethylene (PE) conduit for electrical applications is coloured orange whereas conduit for telecommunications is coloured white, black, or black with white stripes.
Red – electric power lines, cables, conduit, and lighting cables. • Yellow – natural gas, oil, steam, petroleum, or gaseous materials. • Orange - communications, alarm/signal lines, cables, or conduit.
What on earth is it for? Orange pipes are usually gas. Purple is for communications cables, to connect VMS and cameras back to control room. Purple is for communications cables, to connect VMS and cameras back to control room.
Lilac Striped Pipe, also known as Purple Stripe Poly is used for recycled water and non-potable water applications. The benefit of using a lilac stripe is so that after installation, the pipeline is easily recognisable for what service it is providing.
Pipe Color Code Standards
Following pipe color-coding is extremely helpful for obtaining crucial information about a pipe's contents. If color codes are ignored, employees are at a higher risk of causing an accident that may result in physical harm as well as facility damage.
The purpose of the primer is to clean and soften the outer coating of the pipe so that the actual cement will bond more effectively. The purple color is just a dye so that it's easier to identify whether or not primer has been used on a particular joint.
You can identify recycled water in the urban area by its purple pipes, taps and meter.
Purple – Reclaimed water, irrigation, and slurry lines.
Purple is the national color for pipes that carry clean, non-potable water such as groundwater or rainwater. The pipes are made out of purple-colored PVC so they are not confused with pipes carrying treated, drinkable water.
Blue pipes are used for potable or drinking water. Green pipes are sewer and drain lines. Lavender or purple pipes carry reclaimed wastewater that undergoes filtration and disinfection treatment before being reused for irrigation.
Significantly, HDPE pipes are durable and flexible and can be used for more than 50 years without any complications. On the other hand, polyethylene or PE pipe is the most common and widely used plastic globally. It's a common polymer used for packaging mainly plastic bags, films, bottles and geomembranes.
Poly pipe is flexible where PVC is semi-rigid. This enables poly pipe to hold up better in extreme cold. Measuring the low temperature brittleness, poly comes in at a whopping negative 130 degrees Fahrenheit. PVC withstands only up to minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
HDPE Pipe Striping and Colour Coding Guide:
HDPE black and yellow pipe – black with yellow stripes or full yellow jacket – fuel gases, process gases, liquefied gases under pressure (Acu-Gas HDPE pipe). HDPE pipe black with red stripes – water dedicated for fire extinguishing supply lines. (Acu-Fire HDPE pipe).
Pink pipes over Berlin's streets
Huge pink, sometimes blue pipes hang over many streets. Why? They channel groundwater from construction sites into the Spree. And since there are always construction sites somewhere in Berlin, the pink and blue pipes are very present in the cityscape.
Red or black power/electricity ducting can be installed at depths of 450mm to 1200mm. Blue water pipe ducting, installed at 750mm. Yellow gas ducting, installed at 600mm. Green ducting used for CCTV, installed at depths of 250mm to 350mm.
Frozen Portimao Blue Metallic [Blue] Individual Dravit Gray Metallic [Gray] Isle of Man Green Metallic [Green]
The main colors used in ISO 14726 are as follows:
Blue - Fresh water. Brown - Fuel. Green – Sea water. Grey - Non-flammable gases.
There are five main types of plumbing pipe materials that are still in use today: copper, galvanized steel, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), and cross-linked polyethylene (PEX).
As per current Australian Standard, for most electrical installations, the electrical wiring colours used are brown for active, blue for a neutral, green or yellow-green for an Earth (ground).