Article for January 15, 2010
By Rob Vance, Director of Public Works
Recently City Council awarded the Water Meter Replacement Bid to Y&K Excavation, Inc. The project is the replacement of our existing touch read meters with new radio read meters. The project was developed to provide better service to our residents, earlier leak detection and to lessen the amount of time on Public Works staff to read meters. By lessening the time requirement, it gives the City the ability to change from a quarterly billing to a monthly billing cycle without increasing staff. Before making a change like this the City Council would need to evaluate the pros and cons and if they chose to make the change then an ordinance would be required. The city chose these particular radio read meters so that in the future we will be able to do remote reading.
The project has been awarded and the Notice to Proceed issued. The contractor will be starting the project soon. We are expecting a completion date of late March or early April. The project will consist of the replacement of the meters and the installation of new insulation. The contractor will be entering the meter pits in order to replace the meters.
I would also like to address the frozen meter issue. While I had hoped that we would not have frozen meters this year, unfortunately we are experiencing the problem again. This year has not been as bad as two years ago, but has been steadily increasing in number since the New Year. A misconception is that by changing to radio read meters we will not have any more frozen meters, unfortunately changing out meters does not stop meters from freezing. Radio Read meter will freeze as much as the old ones do. We are changing our construction specifications to include a new meter pit, and a thermal coil meter pit. This meter pit has been installed in a couple of new developments and has, so far, not frozen. This year Public Works is also planning to replace a couple of the more freeze prone meter pits with this new pit as a test.
The City has continually researched this problem since the first mass problem arose four years ago, but has not found one solution that could be used throughout the City. There has been discussion as to the location of the meters either in pits or under homes, both have advantages and disadvantages but neither guarantee that the meter won’t freeze. Unfortunately, those under a house are more of a problem than the ones in a pit when they do freeze. We looked at different types of insulation. There are places in town that have the entire pit filled with insulation and they still freeze. And there are pits in town that have no insulation that have never frozen. We even considered changing the depth of all of our water lines to 6 feet. Communities very close to ours that have lines that deep are not free from freeze ups and the cost for the City to increase the depth of all of water lines is simply staggering. The one common thread that we found that causes the meters to freeze is a lack of use. When people are away from their homes for a period of time and no water is being used, the chance of a freeze up increases. So the best way to prevent freeze ups is to leave a little water running.
The Public Works Department will respond to frozen meters Monday through Friday, 7:30 am to 8:00 pm and on Saturday and Sunday from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm. During business hours please contact us at 719-539-6257 and after hours contact us through the non-emergency number for dispatch at 719-539-2596.
Recent Comments