You’ll find the City of Santa Barbara, California between the Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific coastline.  The Country’s “American Riviera” remains a highly popular tourism destination and is home to about 90,000 residents. The city prides itself on its impeccable basic services performance, which includes maintenance of more than 200 miles of gravity-fed sewer lines, largely comprised of six or eight-inch pipes.

Santa Barbara’s collection system is almost entirely gravity-fed and is comprised of a mere seven lift stations and a little more than a mile of force main.  Over eighty percent of the network is made up of vitreous clay while the remaining portion consists of ductile iron, PVC, and other materials.

When Santa Barbara’s system was constructed, six-inch pipes were the norm, and these pipes have begun to show their age over fifty years after being constructed.  The city makes it a point to try and clean the pipes at every five years and its sanitary sewer overflow (SSO) events are very small.  In an effort to further reduce these events, it was determined that the six-inch pipes and root intrusions were the major SSO culprits, spurring the city to devise a solution.

Santa Barbara’s solution would end up being a Sewer Line Rapid Assessment Tool (SL-RAT) and the positive results were quickly noticeable after a brief field trial.  Utilizing active acoustic inspection technology, blocked pipes can quickly be identified, allowing for better allocation of resources for cleaning and maintenance. This technology takes advantage of the fact that both water and sound have a similar sounding flow, which easily allows the operator to determine in less than three minutes if there is a blockage should the sound be degraded.

With an SL-RAT, two people can inspect over 10,000 feet of pipe in a single day.  It is easy to implement and merely requires ensuring that a cover has been opened sufficiently to allow insertion of the microphone and speaker elements below the manhole.  Results are virtually instant and they can be easily uploaded for sharing and editing in just a few minutes.

The Avanti Company, provides Flow Meter Products and Metering Systems to maximize and better utilize the data coming into your Utility.  Call 1-800-284-5231 for additional information on our water and wastewater system products or visit our website at www.avanticompany.com to learn more about the services we provide including rapid assessment of sewer line blockage.