Main Feature
Courtesy of Flowplant
deemed uneconomic who is it really uneconomic for? The Water Companies may deem the costs as uneconomic but if they have not cleaned a drain or sewer that is their responsibility and it blocks and floods residential properties, shops, offices or production facilities, warehouse etc. at present there appears to be no responsibility on their part for picking up the repair bill other than fixing/cleaning the offending pipe. So suddenly the lack of regular cleaning becomes uneconomic for those that do have to pick up the repair bill after any incident caused by a blockage whether that is an insurance company or the property owner if uninsured. Is there therefore an argument that if it can be shown that an incident occurred due to a lack of network maintenance on the part of the utility owner that the costs of clean-up after say flooding due to a blockage should, at least in part perhaps, be placed on those responsible for the pipe and its cleaning instead of insurance companies or property owners. Might this then make the prospect of ongoing maintenance more economic in the longer term given that it would incentivise the Water Companies to at least inspect more often if not clean more?
There is also perhaps a flaw in the planning system for new developments that often seems to be side- lined when a developer may respond along the lines of ‘it should be fine’ when new housing estates or industrial developments simply have their waste output directed into existing pipe networks with little if any contemplation of how the capacity of that exiting network will be affected. It may be that the network when operating at full flow will handle
any additional flow from the new developments but do these flows bring additional potential for materials that might cause blockages and therefore problems that require a cleaning programme to be enacted that might not have previously been necessary or will they simply run surcharged with no spare capacity. The existing network may have been designed with a 20% overcapacity but adding new flow without either upgrading the pipe or ensuring the cleaning regime is improved to maintain flows is simply asking for trouble.
So what could this mean for the future of pipe cleaning in general and water jetting in particular? Well it would seem that education could be the key here, and how many times has that been said about various water industry sectors?
We are not talking about the more generally accepted idea of high levels of Health & Safety here but all aspects of the industry from the ground up. It will be a tall order to get it right because of the scope and number of the organisations that need to be involved.
First if local government officers are going to approve planning applications they must be made at least more aware of the impacts of developments on existing drainage networks and what needs to be achieved to maintain effective removal of all wastewater from the development without affecting existing properties business etc. downstream. It will not be and is not sufficient for planning applications to be passed because someone from the developer or the Water Company involved says it is all in hand – don’t worry, which to many a layman seems to be the case currently. If Water Companies cannot show in engineering terms how any new flows will affect the current networks, how they will handle any changes effectively and what cleaning/ maintenance work will be introduced to ensure continued effective running of the network and much spare capacity remains in the existing system after the completion of the development then applications should not be passed until they can. Letting problems simply pass downstream to another area is just not good enough anymore (ask some of those flooded out in recent years).
Within the industry itself education must start with the client. Procurement officers today tend, it appears, to be taken more from the financial side of any Water Company than from the engineering side. This means that new pipelines
16 drain TRADER | February 2016 |
www.draintraderltd.com
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