A little over two years ago, the staff at City of Concord faced a predicament: should they continue to use a system that was increasingly unreliable, couldn’t fit in 60% of their pipes, and was becoming more and more expensive to repair—or should they cut their losses and invest in another system? “Our inspection needs kept growing and our old system could never keep up,” says Jim Stearns, Camera Operator at the City of Concord. “When Pete Carlson of Haaker Equipment started demoing the ROVVER X, it was as if it was made for our sewer system.”

A plane, a crawler, and a will to succeed in Hawaii.

Allens Plumbing is a residential and commercial plumbing service contractor in Hawaii. Founded on Maui in 1982 by Steve Allen, the original one-man operation enjoys steady growth with operations in both Maui and Oahu. Today, the company has over 35 employees and revenues upwards of $6 million.

Dam Versatile: ROVVER X Performs an Inspection that Scares Away Most Contractors.

When evaluating a sewer inspection crawler for purchase, don’t get distracted by bells and whistles—pay attention to design attributes that keep cost-of-ownership low. These attributes are evident in the core design of the crawler:

In many cases, inflow and infiltration (I&I) accounts for up to 45% of the annual flow to treatment plants. Sources of I&I include leaky manholes, lateral connections and sewer mains. Yet, a majority of rehabilitation efforts focus solely on sewer mains.

The cost of jetting blind can be measured in dollars, hours and gallons of water. And while traditional inspection methods like CCTV are too slow and expensive to offset those costs, visual assessment technologies such as zoom cameras can help a cleaning crew understand pipe condition in fraction of the cost and time− without the use of additional water.

A recent study of all municipal sewer systems in Tennessee conducted by George Kurz (I&I Survey) shows thatinflow and infiltration (I&I)represents approximately 104,720 million gallons per year. This accounts for 45% of the annual flow to treatment plants. Processing this extra water is estimated to cost at least $188 million annually statewide. This figure is conservative compared to the EPA’s recommendation in 2014 for using an O&M rate of $2 to $5 per thousand gallons− resulting in a cost estimate between $208 million to 522 million.