Water Main Break!

Fred · February 2019

We have a water main break that has affected 250,000 homes in our area. The city, who supplies water has been trying to find the source of the problem since 4:30PM this afternoon. It is know about 11:30PM and they still don't know where the problem is. They are saying that the break and leakage is underground and has not surfaced where it would be obvious. They are telling everyone to boil their water until further notice. I am asking myself: What water?? Where are people suppose to get the water they boil?

UPDATE: they are now saying the break may be at a river crossing since they can find no obvious signs of a break on land. Last I heard, over the weekend, the river that flows through the center of our city was about 13 feet above Action Stage. Good luck finding and fixing that anytime soon. Schools are closing for tomorrow. Hospitals are distributing bottled water and suspended the use on any in-house ice machines.

Just in, from the mayor: UPDATE: The City is experiencing a significant loss of water in the millions of gallons within our distribution system.
Crews have been working in the field checking water valves along major distribution lines and at river crossings to determine where the break and/or leak is located.
It is highly possible due to the amount of water being lost, that the break and/or leak is at a river crossing; however, our crews continue to systematically check major lines and river crossing in an attempt to isolate the location of the break.
Because the river is at a very high level due to recent rain events and moving swiftly, it is also highly likely a break at this location would not be seen.
Out of an abundance of caution, the City has issued a precautionary, not mandatory, boil water advisory at this time.
The City’s system has three pressure zones: super high, high, and low. The part of the system impacted is the high pressure zone, which includes the northeast, northwest, southeast city of Dayton and upper southeast part of the County system.
At this time both of the City’s Water Plants are pumping at increased capacity to bring the water system and elevated tanks back into service; however, the areas of the system that have been isolated to help track down the leak will still be out of water. Crews are continuing the process of inspecting over 1600 miles of pipe within the total distribution system to identify and isolate the location of the leak.
These crews will remain in the field until that time. Once located, distribution crews will devise a plan for repair.
It should be noted that the following cities within the County which have their own water systems are not impacted by the precautionary boil water advisory: Cities of Oakwood, Huber Heights, Vandalia, Englewood, Miamisburg, and West Carrollton.
We will continue to update as more information becomes available.

Zman · February 2019

That brand of troubleshooting, usually ends up with this result

DanHolohan · February 2019

The latest:
https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/local/widespread-water-outage-reported-parts-montgomery-county/Fx2cRt6yBlUZdjRq05kCCP/

Jamie Hall · February 2019

It's every water company's nightmare. A major break is no fun at all -- but can be surprisingly hard to find, particularly if, as may be in this one, it's at a river crossing. Then once you've found it, you have to find the valves to cut out that section of pipe -- and hope that they work (due to budget cuts everywhere, they won't have been operated in a while, and the odds aren't good). Then you have to figure out what to do about it -- and again, a river crossing is a class A headache.

Most people never think about their water supply...

pecmsg · February 2019

Jamie Hall said:

Most people never think about their water supply...

or Gas / Oil, Electric, Sewage unless it goes down or the utility's need something built in the neighborhood!

DanHolohan · February 2019

Or where food comes from.

pecmsg · February 2019

DanHolohan said:
Or where food comes from.

Living on the East End there's always Fishing!

DanHolohan · February 2019

Which, in my case, doesn't mean catching. ;-)

Zipper13 · February 2019

As someone who manages municipal utility data for dozens of New England towns,even after finding the break, good luck locating the right valves! So often our clients give us shoeboxes full of plans that they just found in a closet dating back to 1880's - 1920's and say "figure it out". So many have been paved over or improperly abandoned! Make efficient repair a nightmare

JUGHNE · February 2019

That happen on the large scale and way down to the small scale of a village.
Our curb stop location book has some entries of 50 years or so ago. For example: "7 steps east of the house corner and then 11 steps south"
You had to be able to recognize the hand writing....Arnie was 5'8" and Eddie was 6'2".....and adjust your stride accordingly to get close. Modern metal detectors narrow it down.

This story today is one of the rare times where the BFP on the boiler may come into play. As valves are open and closed and pressure is lost in the public water system, some boilers may go nearly dry.

Jamie Hall · February 2019

Zipper13 said:
As someone who manages municipal utility data for dozens of New England towns,even after finding the break, good luck locating the right valves! So often our clients give us shoeboxes full of plans that they just found in a closet dating back to 1880's - 1920's and say "figure it out". So many have been paved over or improperly abandoned! Make efficient repair a nightmare

So true. My daughter's principal job -- she's an historian -- at the moment is going through just such boxes for a major water utility in this State and putting all the information down in a usable and easily accessed form -- and then going out in the field (the fun part) and actually locating all the valves and other appliances and seeing what condition they are in (usually pretty horrible). Whether anyone will actually do anything with the information is another question...

pecmsg · February 2019

Jamie Hall said:

Zipper13 said:
As someone who manages municipal utility data for dozens of New England towns,even after finding the break, good luck locating the right valves! So often our clients give us shoeboxes full of plans that they just found in a closet dating back to 1880's - 1920's and say "figure it out". So many have been paved over or improperly abandoned! Make efficient repair a nightmare
So true. My daughter's principal job -- she's an historian -- at the moment is going through just such boxes for a major water utility in this State and putting all the information down in a usable and easily accessed form -- and then going out in the field (the fun part) and actually locating all the valves and other appliances and seeing what condition they are in (usually pretty horrible). Whether anyone will actually do anything with the information is another question...

That will be the job for your Grand kids or great grand kids!

JUGHNE · February 2019

You have to be at the correct height and then know who made the original measurements.

Zipper13 · February 2019

Jamie Hall said:

Zipper13 said:
As someone who manages municipal utility data for dozens of New England towns,even after finding the break, good luck locating the right valves! So often our clients give us shoeboxes full of plans that they just found in a closet dating back to 1880's - 1920's and say "figure it out". So many have been paved over or improperly abandoned! Make efficient repair a nightmare
So true. My daughter's principal job -- she's an historian -- at the moment is going through just such boxes for a major water utility in this State and putting all the information down in a usable and easily accessed form -- and then going out in the field (the fun part) and actually locating all the valves and other appliances and seeing what condition they are in (usually pretty horrible). Whether anyone will actually do anything with the information is another question...

Wow! I hope she either loves the work or gets paid a ton (hopefully both!). When we do work like that, I do enjoy the working out the puzzles and conflicts they expose at first, but it always leads to months of frustration (and a big invoice to the client).

Old infrastructure is really interesting. One of our VPs has something of a water distribution museum in his office. The old wooden mains are a hoot!

Fred · February 2019

UPDATE: Break was found. Under the river as they suspected. It has been isolated on both sides by shutting off valves. Water pressure is being restored, which took about 8 hours to refill the system. River levels are so high it is anticipated that it will be about 15 days before repairs can begin but everyone should have restored water service by end of day.

Leonard · February 2019

Bad records....

When called city to shut off water at a commercial property. I saw the guy shutting off water at property next door instead. Had to call him over to our place.

When he came over he couldn't find the underground valve. I looked at his paper card. pretty much useless, just number of feet , no map. I went inside and looked at map I made and wrote on wall by utility meter. Came out and pointed out where to chip the ice to find the valve.

Another time city dug up the road and cut an old sewer line to grandma's house. They seemed mad and asked us where it went , it's not on their records, I said I don't know you have maps (grandparents who might have installed it are no longer living). House was 125 years old. They just spliced the line, I think it was an abandoned old roof drain line, since it looked like had been dry for a LONG time.

Jamie Hall · February 2019

Bad records are a major problem. To cite my daughter's work again (she's not being all that well paid, but having a ball) a lot of her work is actually from old photographs (some glass plate negatives!) -- fortunately, when the systems she's working on were being built, someone had the bright idea to take pictures of most of the construction work. But maps? ho ho ho. What maps...

Leonard · February 2019

Funny thing about pictures. I took same when I dug along our driveway to cut tree roots that were damaging pavement. While the trench was open I installed plastic pipe for yard facets and electrical conduit for outlets.

Looking at pics it became obvious they weren't good enough. Either all I saw was close up of pipes in a trench, or a trench who knows where. ( no landmarks, not wide enough of a shot)

Later I took a motion video showing landmarks, then zoom in on piping details. Much better but not really good enough to accurately dig up ends of pipe. Finally made a map as I dug rest of the job. Hard pressed to take measurements and document a map when your trying to get the work done.

--------------------------------

There's a magazine called "trenchless Technology". Pretty amazing what they can do without trenching the whole line. Can insert liners in old pipes and liner can be steel, plastic, epoxy fiberglass sleave. Also can bore underground and install plastic or metal pipe. Can be ~ 3 miles or more long!!!!

Magazine says no or poor records is a common problem all across the USA especially for old lines . Underground: water, sewer, steam , electrical, and phone lines

EBEBRATT-Ed · February 2019

@Fred , glad you have water back.

A better laugh is calling Dig Safe. They usually don't know where anything is

Fred · February 2019

EBEBRATT-Ed said:
@Fred , glad you have water back.

A better laugh is calling Dig Safe. They usually don't know where anything is

Thanks @EBEBRATT-Ed , We do have water but we still have to boil it for drinking, until Saturday afternoon. Several Grocery Stores around town are giving cases of bottled water away but the line of cars is a mile long. Crazy. I'll drink my soda (we call it Pop in these parts).

delta T · February 2019

Records in my dinky little town were supposedly pretty good for city infrastructure, but they were all hard copies, and city hall burnt to the ground in the late 80's. A few isolated maps remained, but what they have tried to reconstruct since then is abysmal.

We do plumbing too, and got a call about a sewer being plugged up. went out with the snake and cleared the line (blockage was about 10' from the house, and decided to run the rest of the line for good measure. Ran 100' of cable out, didn't hit anything at all, felt totally clear. Tried to start taking it back, and it was caught on something....

After much fighting and me and another guy yanking on it, we finally got the snake back and it had actually twisted up and tuned around so head was facing back towards us. Once we finally got it out, we decided to run a camera down it to see what was up.

Well, about 5' past the root intrusion which caused the blockage, the sewer dumped into a stacked stone cesspit buried in their yard.

much investigation later it was determined that the people living in that house had been paying city sewer fees for at least 70 years when there was no connection to the city infrastructure.

Even better was that there was no main in his street. So the city paid us to set a new manhole, run a new 8" city sewer main 200' up the street so that he would have a sanitary sewer. All the neighbors had weird service lines that crossed eachother's properties to get to a different street and go into the sewer.

I have learned to never assume ANYTHING because its all possible.

Good records would have saved a lot of time and effort on that job....The city had no idea where their sewer mains were or that there was not one in that street.

Fred · February 2019

@delta T , Same thing happened to me in the house I owned before the one I am now in. I lived there 20 years, just my son and I and I always had a sewer charge on my water bill. The property was fairly large for a city lot. About an acre and the house sat about 150 ft. from the road, had a good size lake in front of the house, across the street. No houses on that side of the street. I never had a problem with the sewer but I did know there were about three dry wells around the front yard. Not obvious on the surface but as I did landscaping, over the years, I ran into them as I dug for plantings. I would find a fairly good size flat rock and find a 10' to 12f' deep stone walled dry well. I'd put the flat rock back over them and moved my planting. The front yard had a bit of a dip in it and the house sat on a hill so I just assumed that's what they did, a century ago.
At one point, I did find another dry well about 15 feet from the house, much deeper, and it had what I thought was water in it. The property also had a cistern and a dug, brick lined well in the back yard about 10 feet from the back door. Each of those had steel covers on them and were above the surface of the lawn. The cistern was about 12ft deep, maybe 6ft in diameter, brick walls. The well was about 3 ft. in diameter, about 50 feet deep.
I often sat on a concrete ledge at the lake, in front of my house and I often noticed a stream of water running out of a 6" to 8" pipe coming from the direction of my house but I always thought it was run off from the storm sewers on the street. Anyway, shortly after I sold the house, maybe a year or so, the new owners called me and said the sewer had backed up and when they called to have it cleaned, the plumber told them that they needed to have a dug pit drained and that they had to have the house connected to the city sewer system. They asked if I knew the house was never connected to the city sanitary sewer system and I told them they didn't know what they were talking about and told them to look and their last water bill and they would see a sewer charge. They did and went back to the city to question them. In the end, the city paid to run the sewer line to the street and connect to the city line because the various owners, including me had been paying a sewer charge as far back as the city had records. The house was 100 years old at that point. That ended the stream of water that ran into that lake!

Jamie Hall · February 2019

About the time you think you've seen everything, you find out you're wrong... but that's all right, the little village near Cedric's home has "city" water Problem is, at various times there were three competing water companies serving the village area, with three sets of water mains which maybe connect to each other and maybe don't, never mind which one connects to which building. No one knows... Maps? Don't be silly. Makes life interesting for repairs.

Gordy · February 2019

Being in construction all over the northern Illinois area I can tell you that most municipalities don’t have a clue as to where most of the locations are of water, and sanitary pipes.

I did meet a guy with the lake forest water department. Julieing the job. He located water lines solely with divining rods of two Julie flags. I thought he was full of BS. Until I watched him mark about 100 yards of water main. Right on the money. He said he’s found lines where no one else could by other methods.

Next comes Gas as to what is live, and abandoned.
I don’t know how many I’ve found. Nope not on our drawings.......

Leonard · February 2019

In ~early 80's we put gas heat in a commercial car garage in winter. The ground was frozen, so gas co piped it in from apt building next door, ~ 6 inches away, till in spring they dug us a line to the street. Fast forward 10 years that adjacent building burned , was bulldozed, and property became a parking lot. Then we sold our property. Few years later new owner is playing with that capped off 3 inch pipe coming out of floor and finds live nat gas. Reports it to gas co, they say they have no record of it and they start implying he's stealing gas. I told him the building's history .

---------------------------------------

Tried devining rods ...... I got nothing.
Think the guy doing it looks for other clues, changes to natural lay of the land that indicate digging. Green areas that impliy where to dig a well.

Kid that delivers my oil claims to be able to do it...but I'm VERY skeptical

Fred · February 2019

I think you have to get in touch with your inner self before you can do it @Leonard

.It never worked for me either (except for my prior home where I knew where the well, cistern and dry/not so dry wells were.

JUGHNE · February 2019

I have an in-law who claims to find unmarked graves and tell you the gender of the deceased...…….how do you prove him wrong without some late night shovel work?

DanHolohan · February 2019

I would just take his word for it and raise my glass.

Gordy · February 2019

I’m a believer. This guy showed me how to do it also. You have to have a light touch, but it does work.

There was no way he marked that line by using anything but the rods in his hands. There wasn’t anything to reference off of. That line was to be exposed, and he was dead on, and it was 10 feet deep. Heck Nicor only guarantees with in 18”, and they have a tracer wire........

Solid_Fuel_Man · February 2019

Back when I built my house the well driller was here while I was running earth-moving equipment. I had the rough footprint marked out of the house. I told him approximately where I'd like the well. He looks in his truck for his rods.... cusses under his breath and looks around for a forked sapling. Cuts it off, and proceeds to walk around with the big end pointed straight out in front of him.

Suddenly it points down, he says "yup here is a good spot". I look at him funny and say "if ya drill deep enough you'll find water anywhere right?" Reading that I'm just a tad skeptical he gives me the sapling and says "see if you can do it" I give him a look and start walking around is a square with the sapling pointed straight ahead of me.

With a look of shear amazement it starts to point down in the same spot it did it for him. He tells me to back up, I do all the while holding the sapling (now pointed straight toward the ground) and it begins to point back toward the horizon. It literally moved 90 degrees!

He says "see you can do it too!"

I've never tried it again.

EDITED for fat fingers and autocorrect

Fred · February 2019

FINAL UPDATE: The water was back on yesterday. Boil advisory was lifted at about 10:00AM this morning. Broken Pipe is still broken and can't be repaired until the river level drops enough for them to do the repair, estimated at about two weeks out but they are using an alternate route. They say there are 1600 miles of water pipe in the City's water network and the broken pipe was installed in 1991 and they claim it is concrete???? It must have some kind of liner in it. I wouldn't think concrete would be safe for drinking water.

Zipper13 · February 2019

Water mains are often cement lined or entirely made of cenent/concret Transite aka Asbestos cement was a popular material for some time in the 70s and 80s I think, then reinforced concrete in 80s 90s. Plastics and ductile iron are the standard materials now.

Leonard · February 2019

Read they have all types of epoxy liners for pipes.

If underground concrete would be good for compressible stress of soil above. However would think it would have to contain some type of rebar reinforcement since water pressure forces likely are larger than soil weight. In fact rusting rebar might be what cracked the pipe.

Jamie Hall · February 2019

Probably is basically concrete. There are a number of different concrete pipe designs -- some lined. Very common, particularly in larger sizes. Most of them do have reinforcement (often a spiral wrap over the inner core, then overlaid with more concrete -- fun to watch those being made!).

Were I a betting man, I'd bet that what happened here was that river scour got down to the pipe and shifted and broke it. Wouldn't be the first time. A river in flood can scour tens of feet out of its bed in a very short time.

Gordy · February 2019

It’s been all ductile pipe in my area since I can remember.

Intplm. · February 2019

Worriers of water contamination should be the biggest concern for now. It is sure to be a bigger mess then they are anticipating.

EBEBRATT-Ed · February 2019

Springfield, MA is a city of about 180,000. Last year right downtown we shut a building down to fix water leaks in a heat pump/boiler system. This was in he summer. This took a couple of days.

When we were all done we started the water circ pumps and heat pumps and I figured I better fire the two boilers. They didn't need them on it's just for the heat pump loop in the winter but I wanted to make sure everything would work while I was on site. Boilers wouldn't fire......found there was no gas. Traced it back to the meter...no gas.

Found out the gas company disconnected there service which they thought wasn't used. They were fed from a side street. The gas company thought they were fed from Main street.

Whoops!!

Leonard · February 2019

When rivers are flooded by rain got to expect raw poop contaminating the river water. Learned that the hard way tubing down a small river near Farmington, Connecticut in early summer with 1000 people.

Sewage plants overflow from all the excess rain water from streets and roof drains.

Fred · February 2019

They claim to have lost about 100 million gallons of water. Our water is pumped from a huge aquafer under the city with numerous wells around the county. They test the water daily, as part of a state requirement. Several times a day during this outage and say they found no contamination. I know, back last summer they had to shut one of their wells down, near Wright Patterson AFB due to some traces of contamination from spray foam used by the base fire dept. That well remains down.

Intplm. · February 2019

Leonard said:
When rivers are flooded by rain got to expect raw poop contaminating the river water. Learned that the hard way tubing down a small river near Farmington, Connecticut in early summer with 1000 people.

Sewage plants overflow from all the excess rain water from streets and roof drains.

@Leonard Ah Yes. The Farmington river. I know it well.

EBEBRATT-Ed · February 2019

@ Fred
Same thing up here. City of Westfield about 12 miles away has several wells. Some are shut down contaminated by the air national guard base there

Water Main Break!

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