Water

Water

We sprung a leak!

 

Two days after we returned from the USA our water tower sprung a leak. This tower is 35 foot tall at the platform with the hand rail. Its a ten foot cube of sheet steel on a concrete deck surrounded by concrete walls nicely stuccoed over.

First challenge was finding the leak location. With flash lights and mirrors I could see a little bit down from the open top. Between the steel tank and the cinder block wall, there is about three inch clearance and both the steel tank and the block wall undulate, so it was nearly useless trying to get a precise location from up there.  I moved to below the deck and through the fill pipe access I could see just a bit more and got a good idea of the leak location.

Habib, one of my contract workers started removing block until we got to the exact leak location. We ended up with a 2 foot by three foot hole through the concrete wall. We tied the welder to a rope and with two guys up at the top and two guys at the bottom we pulled it up through the ladder access to the deck.

The leak location was at a point where six internal braces meet. So the sheet metal all around that location is able to move slightly with each filling and emptying of the tank. There are eight locations like this inside the tank. Seven more possibilities of this exact type of repair being able to happen.

It was a fairly thick steel.

While the welder was up there we made other needed repairs on the steel railings.

After filling the tank to test the repair, we wire brushed it clean, primer paint applied and the block masonry replaced and repaired.  Water was back in service. Well actually, it never had to be turned off, because we just lowered the water level to below the crack and did the repair with the tank still in service.

A day in the life of Jim