Removal & re-insulation

Dry insulation works because it traps still air. Fill those pores with water and the R-value collapses — a soaked section insulates little better than bare pipe, so the fuel loss comes back while the jacket still looks fine from the walkway. Crushed insulation is the same problem in slow motion.

On a hot line it gets sneakier: the pipe flashes the water near the steel, so the run feels dry at the surface and passes a casual check while the outer layers stay wet and hold water against the metal. On cold and chilled lines there is no flash-off at all — the water just sits on the steel and corrodes it. That is corrosion under insulation, and it is how a pipe fails with no visible warning. Cold lines with a broken vapor barrier are the worst case.

The free survey is where damaged insulation shows itself. The IR gun reads hot stripes on runs that should be uniform — a soaked section shows warmer than its dry neighbors on a hot line, colder and sweating on a chilled one. The jacket tells the rest: rust stains bleeding from the laps, white mineral streaks, a bulge where wet fiber slumped to the bottom of the pipe.

We walk the system end to end, flag every section that is wet, crushed, oil-soaked or missing, and put the whole scope in a written estimate within 24 hours — which sections come off, what we expect to find, and what the rebuild costs. You see the list before anything is touched.

We remove non-asbestos materials only — fiberglass, mineral wool and modern calcium silicate. If a system is old enough that the lagging could contain asbestos, we stop. It gets sampled, and if it tests positive it is handled by a licensed asbestos abatement contractor before we touch anything on that run. No exceptions.

That is not us passing the buck — it is the law and it is your lungs. What we can do is coordinate around it: survey the whole system, mark what is suspect, and come in behind the abatement contractor to rebuild the runs clean. You get one plan instead of two contractors pointing at each other.

Old material comes off in sections, gets bagged at the pipe and leaves the site — it does not sit in a pile in your mechanical room. Then the part that matters: the bare pipe gets inspected before anything new goes on. You get photos of the bare steel, surface rust gets wire-brushed, and deep pitting or wall loss gets flagged to you before we cover it, because insulating over a compromised pipe just schedules the next removal.

The rebuild follows current practice, not whatever was there before: thickness specced to the temperature — 1.5 inches to 200°F, 2 inches to 350°F, 3 inches to 600°F — sealed staggered joints, and a vapor barrier on cold service. Materials and pricing are on the pipe insulation page; the numbers are the same whether the pipe was bare or badly dressed.

North Texas hail opens more jacket laps than forklifts do. A hailstorm that dents the metal jacketing on an outdoor rack lets the next rain straight into the insulation, and by the time the stains show the fiber has been wet for weeks. After a storm, a one-hour walk-down with the IR gun tells you whether you caught it in time to re-jacket, or whether sections have to come out.

Flooded mechanical rooms are the clearest call of all: any insulation that stood in water comes off, because it will not dry inside a jacket and on chilled lines it will never dry at all. We strip to the flood line, inspect and rebuild — one crew, our own people, with the covers and jacket fabricated on our own benches. Small scopes carry the $1,500 job minimum; most re-insulation prices like new work, $18–70 per linear foot jacketed.