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:

Further Reading

COVID-19

Davis Medical Center Press Release: Revised Patient Visitation Rules

ELKINS, WV – Starting this week, some patient visitation rules at Davis Health System hospitals will be relaxed.  Stricter guidelines were put in effect amid the Coronavirus pandemic which began in March, 2020.  Health system officials hope lessening those strict rules will […]

Read More
Announcements

9/28: S. Elkins Water Outage

Water system employees responding to broken service lines have closed valves in South Elkins until repairs can be completed. Customers throughout the circled area in the below map may have low or no pressure. Repairs may take as long as 6 hours.

Read More
COVID-19

Governor: Face Coverings Required Indoors

At today’s coronavirus briefing, Governor Jim Justice announced an order requiring that “face coverings” be worn “in all public indoor places where social distancing cannot be maintained.” The order is effective as of 12:01 a.m. on July 7, 2020. The order does […]

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!