Tuesday, April 5, 2011

A British utility plugs record number of leaks

Alison Brown in Edie.net: Southern Water has [in the UK] repaired a record 22,000 leaks in the past year, despite one of the harshest winters in recent times. The water company says the repair rates are due to a £20 million leak reduction programme it launched in April 2010 and will now be investing a further £20 million into the programme.

The company plans to replace one hundred kilometres of water mains over the coming year and fit more than 100,000 water metres. Water metres with leak alarms will be installed by the company in homes across the South East. The alarms are activated when water runs continuously through the meter over 24 hours. This, Southern Water estimates will save up to five million litres of water a day.

The company's priority is to find leaks before they become so severe that bursts occur. They use specialist acoustic equipment and traditional listening sticks to detect small leaks in the underground distribution system….

A drain shot by David Liddle, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

No comments: