Catch-Up Time

By: John Hraska Circuit Rider

It is now August and slowly the Fall is coming. I'm sure that all of us have things that we put off until we have some free time after the summer rush, I do. This might be the time to check out some of the possible problem areas in our systems that might be troublesome in the late Fall, Winter or early Spring. Such things as valves, hydrants, pipe connections, electrical connections, pumps, chemical metering pumps, meters and the list goes on. I will try to mention a few, just as a reminder, from some of the problems I encountered in my travels as a circuit rider. Let's start off with hydrants. I have been to numerous systems to look for leaks and found leaky hydrants. These do not leak badly but they do leak and will get worse as time goes by. Now could be the time to rebuild or replace these hydrants. It is a lot better than when the temperature is 20 degrees below zero. Another thing to check for is valves in front of your hydrants. Locate them, try them and repair or exercise them to confirm their operation. This also applies to water main street valves. There is nothing more frustrating than to shut off a street valve, for a repair and find out that it doesn't hold, when it's 20 below zero. Even if you can't repair or replace some of these valves, at least you will know which ones are defective, for reference when you have a break and need to shut down a section of water main. Valves in pump houses should also be checked and proven. It's good to know that the service valves on either side of check valves, pump heads and chemical feed manifolds will hold in case repairs are needed in those areas. There is also another very important valve, and this is one that is usually the one that is most ignored. This is the individual service connection curb valve. Please locate as many as you can and keep good records of the locations. These valves are most important to leak location and customer assistance, not to mention how they can be used to encourage payment of the water bill. Locate a few at a time or as many as possible, for your convenience at a later date. Believe me, you'll be glad that you spent the time for location. Another area to check out is your reservoir intakes and delivery lines to your water plant; inspect them and do any repairs that may seem needed during this good weather. It's hell to try and locate these or do repairs when there is 2 feet of snow over them. The same applies to well sites and connected piping that delivers the well water to the treatment facility or storage tank. Don't forget the spring sources, collection boxes and connections to these. I have found numerous breaks in source water piping. I've found systems that had pumps running to beat the band and only about ½ of the pumped water was getting to their treatment or storage facilities, spring fed systems that were only receiving a small amount of the water produced by their springs due to poor connections at their collection boxes or delivery piping, reservoir intake screens clogged or rusted and not allowing enough flow or raw water mains, from reservoirs to the treatment plants with breaks in them. Most of these problem areas are out of site but should not be out of mind. It doesn't take too much effort to try and abate at least some of the possible problems by inspection, location, testing and confirming proper operation. A wonderful thing to have is a generator. Generators are great, when working properly. Keep up on your required maintenance. Test-run the generator according to the manufacturers recommendations, have it serviced when needed and you will have a good back up. Also have the electrical output and needed switching and relays checked, while the need is not an emergency. Make sure you have a good grade of fuel available and a good amount to last you. Be careful not to overstock your fuel. The fresher the better! For those of us who don't have emergency generators, this might be the time to present the advantages of having one to our respective governing boards. When an emergency is upon us is not a good time to find who to blame for not having power to run our water and wastewater systems. The time is now, and when all of the surrounding electric power is out, we can find the people responsible for making sure ours isn't, and thank them! Most of the time we would re-elect them. Now is also a good time to check all of our operational controls. Level controllers for elevated tanks, pneumatic tanks, above ground reservoirs and below ground reservoirs. Controllers for well and reservoir lift and delivery pumps should also be checked and tested. Don't forget to check and test your alarm systems, for those of you lucky enough to have them. A visual check of the utility service lines, transformers, fuses and connections to our facilities is another item we can verify before bad weather to try to avert breakdowns. Next on the list might be our pumps. Consider system pumps, chemical metering pumps and process pumps. This procedure could be as simple as checking the amperage draw at maximum operation, temperature, noise level and seal leakage. Again, repair or replace any problem equipment. Warm weather is always more pleasant to work on these items than freezing Winter weather. As in the previous paragraph, check the controllers on these pumps. I would like to finish up with the check and calibration of process control meters and distribution meters. These control devices can be a big help during the Winter months. The first thing they could indicate, is a higher daily flow, warning you of possible leakage or water abuse and waste. If operating properly, a water meter is a great indicator of what is happening in our system. Good records must be kept of normal water use and comparisons can be made daily of the system operation for that day or any other day. The process control meter tells us the amount of water being treated and the chemical requirements for that day. No matter how simple or complex our treatment process is, we need to know the amount of water treated and delivered to our customers. If for no other reason, than to put the information on our report sheet to the State.

In closing I want to say that I know how busy all you people in the water industry are, but consider a little time stolen from your other duties and devoted to some prevention practices can save you hours of hard grueling work during adverse conditions. Try it, you'll like it!