It's actually the standard amount. I'm a senior water treatment plant operator, I don't work for Baltimore but based on their CCR they are going straight by the book. Fluoride is safe under a certain residual, which Baltimore is well below. The town I work for also has pulled up a few wooden mains in the last decade. They can last nearly 100 years, they can actually be safer than steel or iron pipes due to their lack of leeching metals via corrosion. The main concern is that they may blow up under pressure, but when they do the are replaced.

The water is safe and healthy.

Literally the only correct answer in this thread and you're down voted to shit lol.

Edit: I jumped the gun and see what the down votes are about. The water is perfectly safe to drink. Every public water system in the country chlorinates their water to kill biological growth.

I saw that hand once. Looked like this 🖕

Hey awesome! I'm super glad to hear it. You just saved yourself some good money and time without your Amp. And doing that stuff makes you feel super accomplished and badass hahah. I haven't taken my equipment to the shop in like 10 years thanks to YouTube and strangers on the internet, glad I could be on the otherwise and help!

Yeah good move, it might just be one tube so you might be able to get away with buying one and try replacing one at a time til you find which one is out. But you should be fine, just have the Amp unplugged when you remove and replace each tube and then plug it back in to try it out.

^ 2nd this. Especially if the Amp starts with full power and then dies off after a minute of use. Good sign that one of the tubes isn't able to handle the amperage running through it when there's more current draw. You should try buying a new tube and replacing one at a time and see if the issue still persists and work your way down the line with the one new tube until you've tried them all.

You could save yourself decent money by doing this by not having to pay for getting it serviced. Then if that turns out to not be the issue you still have a new tube which you will need eventually anyhow.

My understanding is that those are usually for wastewater applications, pipes that aren't under high pressure, like you said. Also this is just speculation but the chemistry of the water put out by drinking water plants is specifically suited to be non corrosive to lead, copper, galvanized steel, other metals, and pvc piping. I'm familiar with the liners you're talking about but I'm not sure if they'd meet health code standards for drinking water pipes due to chemical exchange between the material and water.

Those videos are satisfying to watch tho lol.

Disasters usually take longer than a few short hours to remediate. Yes the people on the street will have no water for a few hours but it is likely probably already back. Also a brand new pipe can break, I've seen one be blown out by irregular pressure combined with the freeze thaw cycle of the soil in the city I work for a few months after it was put in. I've also seen mains nearly 100 years old still working fine. Baltimore has hundreds of miles of pipes under the ground, sections get replaced when they fail, that's how maintenance of any distribution system works. It would be economically infeasible and wasteful to dig up every pipe that's in the ground and replace it just because.

I'm not sure how much money Baltimore is getting from the new infrastructure bill, but it's public information and you could easily found out and look up where in the budget it's being allocated to. I know in the city I work for the lead line replacement program is being funded almost entirely by funds allocated from the infrastructure bill.

A water main break hardly qualifies as a disaster. There are literally thousands every day all across the country. It's a regular and expected facet of running a water distribution system.

The nature if a distribution system would make that pretty hard, like asking for a water system that doesn't leak. But agreed, if something becomes a hazard with a steam leak then it should need to get fixed asap because steam can be dangerous.

I only learned about this recently as well, was unaware there is currently steam distribution in Baltimore. There's talk of reviving and expanding steam distribution in cities as a replacement for natural gas heating in an effort to reduce co2 emissions. Since steam is a byproduct of electricity generation and other industrial processes it is essentially a free source of heat that just needs to be piped and distributed across a city. It was commonplace 100 years ago, it would be cool to see it make a comeback.