Discovering the real condition of pipes

The City of Gresham, Oregon, US, is a suburb directly east of Portland,with over 100,000 residents and about 250 miles of water mains. The city recently embarked on the largest street reconstruction programme in Gresham’s history to rebuild deteriorated residential streets. With numerous water mains approaching the end of their design life, the city also implemented a targeted pipe replacement excercise. Since the age of a pipeline alone is not a reliable indicator of failure rates, the city was looking for a means to determine the comparative life of its pipe assets. Gresham was specifically in need of a testing strategy that worked on cast and ductile iron mains, which make up the entirety of the system. The city chose to do acoustic velocity testing using Echologics® ePulse® condition assessment technology. This technology was used on both cast iron and ductile iron mains of all sizes in two programmes: 1. The first set of water mains tested were buried under...