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Tuesday, April 11, 2017

The new water main...

In January the residents in our street got notice that work would start shortly on a new water main. The date the work was due to start came and went, but eventually about 3 weeks later, they started work.
This area was subdivided in the 1950s and I reckon the water mains were still the same ones...we have very poor water pressure.


I expected quite a bit of disruption to supply but this turned out to be not the case...the water was turned off very infrequently during the month that the work took. In the early stage the work was mainly one at night. Then as the work progressed, it was done during the day.
 Supply was maintained by a giant temporary pipeline run along the footpath with a connection into each property.



To enable us to enter our driveways without squashing that pipeline, the workmen put rubber ramps over the pipe. These ramps moved sideways sometimes when a car drove over them causing a few skidding sounds 😮


 My little Mitzi Micra found these ramp blocks just too challenging to drive over so my car was parked outside on the street during the work.


After a temporary water supply was established, it was time for those old water mains to be dug up. And I do think they were 1950s vintage!!




So lots of digging on one side of the street. Apparently the new mains were to be threaded through the series of holes on the footpath opposite and then pipes would be run from there, under the street, to our side.





It was great when they finally finished the work and connected us up to underground pipes again. You see that above ground pipeline meant that the water heated up hotter than our hot water system. Showers had to be very quick and I had to use iced water from the fridge to cool bath water for our granddaughter.
And our water pressure still isn't great which is a bit disappointing. On the bright side, our water is traveling through lovely new mains. 😊

5 comments:

Kaisievic said...

So interesting, thank you.

angela said...

You might have to do pipes at your home to improve the water pressure. That's what we had to do
It's a lot of work. Glad they have finished and now life can return to normal for you

margaret said...

seeing the old pipes it was as well they replaced them think they would have soon burst only the rust holding them together

biebkriebels said...

It is interesting to watch the streetworks so close by. We had the same here with a renovation.

Susan said...

And hopefully the temperature has come down too - the old pipes look a bit like dinosaur relics!!