Alerts
By: Sutton StokesMarch 7, 2022

New Equipment to Maintain Water Valves

To repair a broken water main, it’s often necessary to turn off the water going to that pipe. But what if the valve is stuck or broken? One reason that some water outages are so widespread is because we have fewer working valves than ideal, so we aren’t always able to isolate small areas.
To better maintain and protect our current water valves the Elkins Water Board recently took delivery of the valve maintenance trailer shown in these pictures. This trailer’s central feature is a valve exerciser, a device that repeatedly turns a valve on and off to prevent the valve from becoming so stiff that it cannot function properly.
The valve exerciser does this by cycling through different levels of torque to break stuck valves open. This one starts out at a rate of 150 ft/lb. and can go all the way up to 750 ft/lbs. As the exerciser operates the valve, it counts the turns and measures the torque to avoid breaking the valve. It also has a vacuum system to clean dirt and debris out of valves. Finally, the trailer also has a GPS system to store valve locations and add notes for future reference.
Elkins council authorized use of $88,000 of ARPA funds to purchase the trailer.
Not cheap–but consider that the Elkins water system has about 500 valves with a replacement cost of $12-15,000 each. This exerciser will pay for itself if it keeps us from needing to replace even a half dozen.

Categories:

Water Board

Catalogged in:

City Hall News

City Hall News: Week of July 19, 2021

Elkins, W. Va., July 17, 2021: Next week will see meetings of council’s Public Safety Committee and Personnel Committee. Also meeting are the Elkins Sanitary Board, the Elkins Historic Landmarks Commission, and the Elkins Parks and Recreation Commission. The Elkins Planning Commission […]

Read More
City Hall News

City Hall News: January 3, 2021

Elkins, W. Va., January 3, 2021: Council meets Thursday at 7 p.m. Next week’s regularly scheduled meetings of council’s Finance Committee and Economic Growth and Development (EGAD) Committee are canceled, as is the regularly scheduled meeting of the Elkins Tree Board. Christmas […]

Read More
City Hall News

City Hall News: Week of April 4, 2022

Meeting this week are council’s Finance Committee and the Elkins Tree Board. Council meets Thursday. The Finance Committee meets Monday at 10 a.m. to review requested FY 2022 budget revisions and grant opportunities for the Elkins Fire Department. The Tree Board meets […]

Read More
Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Stay up to date with the latest news and alerts by signing up for our newsletter!

You have Successfully Subscribed!