The copper pipe used to supply water is a copper alloy. If it was solid copper it would not be rigid. Copper fungicides and CCA use chelated copper making it mobile in the plant. As for a dripping pipe, wouldn't dripping from any material cause rot? ;-)

tj

Hi everyone.

tj - Thanks for pointing out the technicalities of copper pipe and copper in general; I'm now much wiser than I was before.

To answer your question, "wouldn't dripping from any material cause rot?", my answer is no; as I have two main shade houses and some of the roofs contain both hardwood and (old) galvanised pipe. I always water overhead (just like nature) and water drips from both the old pipe and the hardwood timbers and onto the plants below every time I water or it rains and it doesn't cause any damage.

The only time I ever had a problem was when I re-timbered the roof of an old shade house with CCA treated pine in an attempt to lower maintenance and eliminate the need to paint. This was when I was just starting in brom's and before I had joined any forums.

When I noticed plants starting to die that were directly beneath the timber joists I knew something was wrong and I looked up a local brom grower who confirmed that it was the new timber, or more specifically, the copper leaching out of the CCA product the timber had been treated with.

A short time later I joined our Illawarra Bromeliad Society and was giving a brief talk about my experience with CCA treated timber and was asked to write a summary of the talk for printing in out quarterly magazine "Newslink". To see the whole story which is called "USING TIMBER WHICH HAS BEEN TREATED WITH PRODUCTS CONTAINING COPPER." See: http://www.bromeliad.org.au/news/Ill1007.htm 

All the best, Nev.