In Los Angeles, California, the problem of old, worn down, leaky cast iron and plastic pipes cause staggering amounts of water loss: an average of between 16 million and 36 million gallons every day. These 100-year-old pipes are in desperate need of refurbishing and replacement. With millions of gallons lost each day, the question to be asked is how will the city of Los Angeles pinpoint these leaks to refurbish and repair them?
To answer this daunting question requires the expert assistance of professional Leak Detection specialists, like GPRS Leak Detection Division.
At GPRS, we know that water is a precious resource, and when it’s gone, it’s gone and with every gallon that leaks away undetected, your company, campus, or your municipality loses money. Unlike our competitors, who focus primarily on residential properties, GPRS focuses on commercial leak detection. We specialize in acoustic leak detection: investigating subsurface leaks within mainlines, valves, hydrants, steam lines, and fire loops. Our highly trained Project Managers are equipped with cutting-edge equipment and experienced, well-practiced ears to detect leaks within all pressurized metallic, plastic, and cement pipes, widening the gap between ourselves and the industry standard.
Our state-of-the-art equipment consists of four main pieces. The first two pieces are the correlators. They come in red and blue and are used to find the distance between stations (red and blue) to a leak. The correlator has a sensitive magnetized microphone that listens for leak noises on the pipe and transfers the time travel of the leak noise into a distance to be measured. Another key to our success is the DXmic: an advanced, electronic, ground microphone that amplifies noise generated by water escaping from pressurized pipes. The DXmic has three automatic filter settings based on pipe material. By employing the microphone's sliding scale feature, our Project Managers are able to select a specific range of frequencies for rejecting or accepting different sound levels allowing for precise pinpointing of leaks. The final piece of equipment used by our team to locate subsurface leaks is the elephant foot. This piece of equipment blocks out additional background noise and helps the controller listen down to capture the sound that is beneath the ground better. This equipment is teamed up with our biggest asset, the trained ear of our Project Managers. The combination of man and machine is highly effective in monitoring and pinpointing subsurface leaks, so our customers can reduce water loss to save time and money.
Our correlator enables our Project Managers to get a baseline for all the hydrant points in the area which we then follow by correlating any other suspect regions. We then use the DXmic paired with the elephant foot to narrow down and pinpoint the precise leak location. This cutting-edge equipment, paired with GPRS' highly trained Project Managers, sets us apart from the competition in our leak detection services.
On main water lines in large cities such as Los Angeles, the common leak detection techniques used for residential properties are not practical due to the size and length of commercial pipes. With GPRS Leak Detection Services, we are not limited by the size and length of pipes, which makes us the ideal locators in the Los Angeles area for any suspected leaks you may have on pressurized pipes.
Another way GPRS widens the gap between our services and the average leak detection industry standard is by providing our customers with a one-stop shop to locate and mark out all the surrounding subsurface utilities as well. Marking utilities is significant benefit of using GPRS services because it allows you to eliminate the hassle of coordinating multiple companies to locate the water leak and utilities before digging. That way our customers can bundle and save when making the needed remediations to line leaks, while also ensuring that their project is on time, on budget, and safe. Once we’ve located leaks, we recommend scheduling annual water loss surveys to ensure our customers minimize their water loss and associated costs.
To learn more about how GPRS Leak Detection Services can help you reduce water loss and save money, click here.