Leak Busters
22.05.03

ADR offer Leak Detection Services on water mains and other pipe work throughout New Zealand for councils, LATE’s, contractors, plumbers and also direct to property owners (both commercial and domestic).

 The state of the art equipment used includes the Casella Spectrascan Correlator.  This enables accurate and timely analysis of leaks and gives accurate pinpointing of leak locations in pipe work.  Sizes can range from 600mm trunk mains down to 12mm house pipe work.

All types of pipe work are catered for including (but not limited to) concrete, concrete lined steel, steel, cast iron, fibre both black and fibre cement, copper, PVC, polyethylene and butylene.

Recent examples of Successful Leak Detection Services

School  After receiving a higher than normal usage bill from the local council, a primary school requested assistance from ADR’s Leak Detection services.  They were found to be loosing 16 cubic metres per day.  The school had many different generations of pipe work and little in the way of plans, other than the knowledge that there was a 50mm line feeding 20mm and 15mm steel and copper laterals to separate classrooms and toilet blocks. 

With no sign of any surface flooding, a survey of all water usage within the school was conducted during school holidays.  The problem was found to be two underground leaks within a metre of each other. 

Domestic - Beach  Property owner near the beach with very

 sandy soil received a letter from their council regarding high water

 usage.  A leak was found under the concrete driveway, in a 12

 mm galvanised pipe.  Again no sign of water above the surface.

Hillside  A leak appeared in road way with underlying volcanic

rock and the resulting flow of water was washing out part of the

hillside and threatening houses below.  The actual leak was traced

to 50 metres away, coming from on a tapping band polyethylene

lateral.

Supermarket  A supermarket found their meter was turning over with no usage within their premises.  The plumber called to repair the leak, was unable to locate any pipe work and no plans were available. There were no signs of any surface water.

The ADR leak detection technician was called out to assist in locating both the pipe work and the leak.  The owner knew approximately where a 50mm polyethylene pipe ran underneath the loading bay.  An exploratory hole was dug, not exposing any pipe work but resulting in a large volume of water flowing from the hole.  The entire area was acting like a sponge due to the shingle fill in the foundations. 

The technician traced the pipe work using metal detection and another hole was dug exposing the pipe work this time.  With the pipe exposed the technician completed the correlation and the leak was located for repair.

Night Flow Trailer  Offered as core service to councils and LATE’s is a night flow trailer unit, which is capable of night flow analysis of large areas; up to 2,000 households per area. This unit can also be used on a street by street basis where location and loss analysis is required when illegal connections to fire mains are suspected