Infrared Finds Source Of Costly Fountain Leak in Mall
08/17/2005
N. Billerica, MA, August 17, 2005.- When the final phase of a several-acre shopping mall complex outside of Birmingham, AL was completed about five years ago, the developer installed a 400,000 gallon fountain to set off the beautiful surrounding scenery provided by its landscaping. Since then, they started paying around ten thousand dollars a month more than their previous water bill, which they assumed was a result of evaporation from the fountain spray, since the fountain water itself is re-circulated.
But when the fountain went down for repairs about a year ago, the water bill stayed almost the same. So they called in a leak detection service, which ran statistics research on the meters and flow valves only to come to the conclusion that the mall was losing the water around the clock, and not just during operation hours. These tests cost the mall thousands of dollars, but provided no conclusion as to where the loss was occurring.
Birmingham-based LeakTite Consultants, Inc. was then asked to investigate the massive water loss problem. Using its FLIR ThermaCAM® B-1 infrared camera, in a little over 5 hours they were able to detect temperature differences in the sod overlay and locate the location of the leak.
“The fountain is terraced with two levels,” says LeakTite President Darrell Parker, “so we were able to scan the ground surrounding the fountain from the upper level, a height of about 50’” “Once we identified the wet areas -- the fact that they were under sod, not stonework made them easier to find, and ultimately for the mall to repair – we were able to conclude that the leak was coming from either ground water, or from city-supplied meters, since the valve from the fountain had been turned off.”
Using a simple, hardware store pool chemical testing kit, LeakTite was then able to identify the areas with high chlorine content by comparing it with tap water from the mall and thus isolate the water coming from the city. They immediately dug in those areas and found that a 4-foot deep, 1-inch reserve supply line to the fountain had never been connected during construction, and water had been flowing freely out of if for the past five years.
The end of the reserve supply line was connected it to the fountain with six feet of sch-40 pvc pipe and 2 compression couplings, back-filled the area and restored the landscaping. Total repair cost was less than $1000. The use of the B-1 to identify the problem saved the cost of having to dig up all of the supply lines to the fountain – at an estimated cost of over $100,000 in excavating, re-paving and re-landscaping. And, of course, the elimination of the problem is now saving the mall over $120,000 per year on their water bill. For more information on the ThermaCAM B1, contact: dick.price@flir.com For more information on LeakTite, contact: dparker@Icicorp.net