The City of Fort Collins has just wrapped up the monitoring phase with Ayres Associates, after about three years of intensive work, Fater said. Now the City is using the data to go into the field and pinpoint exactly where the openings are in the system and why they exist, whether it is leaking manholes, broken pipes, or some other problem.
Beyond finding – and ultimately fixing – the source of the leaks, Fater said flow monitoring has had other benefits, such as finding areas where there are capacity problems and using the data to compare with its hydraulic models.“ The better data we have, the better equipped we are to solve any problems that may crop up,” he said.
Both Matkins and Fater have been pleased with Ayres Associates’ service.“ Ayres Associates works closely with our operations crew; we have a high degree of trust in them,” Matkins said.“ In fact, the trust is so high that Chris
( Pletcher) is almost considered an extension of our staff; he is able to make decisions and changes on the fly. We’ re lucky to have Ayres right down the road.”
Fater said having engineers doing the flow monitoring brings many benefits.“ Ayres has been great. It’ s not an easy job to go and crawl into manholes; it’ s certainly not a glamorous job,” he said.“ It’ s good having someone in the manholes with knowledge of hydraulics; they know what they’ re looking for.”
And for Pletcher, he said he relishes the opportunity.“ The whole reason I went into civil engineering is because I love going outdoors, but really a lot of engineering is sitting at a computer. To be able to go outside and see real things happen – sewer monitoring does that.”
Above: Civil engineers Florian Fiebig, left, and John Eklund, right, view the inside of the sewer while conducing sewer flow monitoring activities.
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