I just ran into a situation that makes me a little nervous about
water department flow tests. I have been asked to straighten out a
mess on a system in a 7 story condo (multiple issues). A designer who
was asked to verify some hydraulics got a flow test from the
municipality which was about 23 pounds higher than the design test,
which was done several years ago. At that time, she was told this was
due to improvements in the public system. They had been doing a lot
of work on the system, so it was believable. System pressure gauges
were with a reasonable number of the static pressure. When I got on
board, I also checked with the water department and was told the same
thing. Recently, a contractor working on the system noticed the the
pressures reading lower. Upon further investigation, including
pressure recorders on hydrants, it was found that the pressures
varied 30 psi over a 3 day period. The water department was not aware
of the range of fluctuation until they did this test. Their
explanation was various pumps kicking in to fill tanks, including for
the town's largest water user. Now we are going back and
re-calculating the systems with a much lower static pressure. Has
anybody run into this type of thing? Is there a good way to detect
it? I consider myself fairly savvy and sniffing out problems, but
this caught me off guard. How can a water department not know this
type of thing is going on. This is a small city in CT.
Todd G. Williams, PE
Fire Protection Design/Consulting
Stonington, Connecticut
www.fpdc.com
860.535.2080
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