Replacing a water main down a long driveway

4 Nov

You live on a back section, and now you have a water leak. Sometimes, leak detection equipment cannot pinpoint where the issue is.

So what can you do?

No matter how sophisticated our leak detection equipment is, sometimes we are unable to find where your leak is. Maybe the leak is not making enough sound to be heard by the listening equipment, maybe there is too much ambient noise, or maybe there are too many other services around.

To find where the water main runs we can use a tracing wire you can trace the path of the water main, however the wire cannot get past a fitting underground so sometimes we get stuck..

So, what to do

The options are:

1. Directional drilling

A rig drills a long hole underground to bring a water line to your house. This is extremely expensive, you can possibly accidentally cut other services, but it is an option if money is no issue.

2. Run a new water main along the driveway.

Recently in Howick we had just this issue. A leak down a long driveway that could not be pinpointed. On top of that, we had to bring the water main up through some brick paving.

We had to dig a new line to the driveway, then run a water main up the fencing until we were perpendicular to our client’s house. Then we had to cut a small track across the driveway, to then gain access to the area under the brick paving.

This is a great option, but unless you can dig in the water main down the side of the driveway, you will see it.

Here are some pictures from our last long driveway water main fix.