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Working outside in winter weather brings the obvious challenges of extreme cold, snow, and ice. Sometimes those factors can present additional obstacles for Louisville Water field crews.
“Right now, with all this snow, just finding services (lines) and everything in between, it’s almost impossible to do,” said Plumber Leader Jason McGinty.
McGinty and his crew arrived at Deer Park Avenue off Newburg Road last Friday morning. They immediately got to work, blocking off the road near the water main break, and setting up the vacuum truck to clear the hole where water pooled in the grass near a driveway. Unfortunately, what initially appeared to be a typical main break on the surface, took a turn.
“There’s a gas pipe and sewer pipe but no water pipe,” Plumber Leader’s Assistant Kyle Barnes said as he scanned the area with a utility locator. “We’re thinking that the main break is actually up the hill because it’s (water) coming out of the drainage pipe here.”
As the crew walked up and down the street trying to track down the source of the main break, McGinty called in a reinforcement for times like this.
“We call Mark Martin, and he does what he does and finds this main for us.”
A leak survey technician, Martin uses specialized equipment such as a correlator.
“The correlator is an electronic sounding device. I put stations on each side of where we think it (water main) is. Those two stations start listening for leak sounds and they start trying to determine which station is hearing the sound the fastest, the loudest, and they pinpoint that leak,” Martin said.
Martin also carries a geophone which was one of the tools Senior Repair Leader Mike Sweatt used at the Deer Park site to pick up soundwaves from the rushing water. The crew eventually located the break in the pipe and repaired it.
McGinty faced a different challenge on Sunday in the Parkland neighborhood. A routine call turned into a very long day for the whole crew after a gas line was hit on Dumesnil Street.
“It makes our day five or six hours longer depending on how long it takes LG&E and the fire department to clear the scene before we can get in there and fix the main break,” explained McGinty.
Parked cars are what created trouble for Plumber Leader Mon’Shea Harris and Heavy Equipment Operator Eric Hollan on Magnolia Avenue last week. In this instance, it wasn’t exactly a case of people ignoring “no parking” signs. For residents in Old Louisville, street parking is often the only option and several inches of snow from the winter storm earlier in the week left them stuck.
“If the person is at home and we think we know where the person lives, we’ll attempt to find them and knock on the door to ask them to move their vehicle. If no one answers the door, we will proceed to have a tow truck move it,” Harris said.
Other times, the potential impact on the public and traffic has larger implications. Monday morning, a crew waited in a parking lot for the ‘locates team’ to mark the other utility lines underground.
“We can’t dig until they’ve located the gas. High-voltage electric and gas, those are your main concerns,” shared Plumber Leader Charlie Switzer.
But that wasn’t all he had to consider for this job.
“The biggest part today is going to be locating exactly where it is. I’ve got gates (valves) I can’t find because they’re buried (under snow). It’s going to be cold and traffic; that’s what I’m worried about.”
While they could reroute drivers passing by on Brownsboro Road, Switzer said that “school buses will not be able to get in or out of Chenoweth Elementary” when school dismissed in the afternoon. Louisville Water worked with JCPS officials and decided it would be best to hold off on the repair until later in the afternoon or early evening.
So, while you may not always know what goes on behind the scenes or the challenges our crews face, you can trust that we are doing everything in our power to keep Louisville Pure Tap® flowing.
