Manholes are vertical underground confined spaces used by utility personnel as a point of access to a sewer system.

Thank you to the many customers and partners who visited our booth during WEFTEC 2018 in New Orleans last week. We welcomed nearly 300 guests and enjoyed seeing many of our sales partners from across the country. A special thanks to Best Equipment, our sales partner in Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, for loaning us their new demo truck for the show.

Robert Korosec, PLS, is cofounder of Utica, NY-based Subsurface Utility Imaging (SUI), a company dedicated to location and inspection of underground infrastructure assets since 2010. As such, he’s been actively using and researching new pipeline and manhole inspection solutions on behalf of many municipal clients. “Cities don’t have money, and their infrastructure is unreliable,” he says plainly. “Anything we can do that makes sewer maintenance more cost-effective is useful and appreciated.”

Inspecting sewer lines can help you identify I&I sources and address any problem areas—but that’s not the only inspection you should prioritize. Modern manhole inspections could also save you high treatment costs and expensive regulatory action. Envirosight’s white paper,Rethinking Manhole Inspection: A New Way to Reduce I&I Quickly and Cost-Effectively,outlines why the inspection of manholes can sometimes be more effective than pipeline evaluation and is gaining popularity within the industry.

Manholes are often the biggest source of inflow and infiltration in a sewer system, but aren't always part of routine sewer inspections. Manhole inspections should be included in every utility's inspection practices. Take our Manhole Inspections Quiz to test your knowledge on the subject.

Sewer infrastructure typically runs under streets, so crews who clean, inspect and rehab sewers are routinely faced with traffic hazards as they do their work. The Federal Highway Administration reports that in 2015, a work zone crash occurred once every 5.4 minutes. Taking extra precautions to make these zones compliant with traffic safety regulations is the best way to minimize risk.

exfiltration.is the leakage of wastewater out of a sanitary sewer system through broken or damaged pipes and manholes. Wastewater that leaks out of defective pipe joints and cracks may contaminate ground and surface water and cause a host of other problems, including pipe structure failures due to erosion of soil support, and ground subsidence due to erosion of underground soil.

沙井是每個下水道係統的關鍵部分，因為它們提供了必要的通風和清潔和檢查下水道的接入點。美國環保署估計，美國每400英尺的人行道上有大約200萬名沙井 - 一個人孔。許多這些沙坑都嚴重腐爛或需要立即康複或更換。索霍爾生成不成比例的量inflow and infiltration (I&我)and play a unique role in the structural integrity of roadways. From an operational standpoint, inflow and infiltration of groundwater reduces capacity of the collection system as a whole. From a structural standpoint, deterioration and corrosion within a manhole can cause cave-ins (Water World).