Over the Christmas period our maintenance team responded to an emergency call out from a site in the North of England. The entire water supply had failed meaning no water was being delivered from the borehole.
The site in question runs entirely on a private water supply and should they have to switch onto a mains supply due to failure it becomes expensive and inadequate. Luckily our maintenance team were on hand to help; responding quickly to the call out, diagnosing the issue, sourcing the replacement pumps and implementing the fix in under 24 hours.
This allowed the site to become fully operational again and prevented them from incurring any further mains water costs and maintain a good level of supply to the site.
Why Did This Problem Occur?
One issue we run into often when working on larger sites is where different contractors have completed the water supply installation. This poses a problem for a number of reasons.
Firstly the technology used doesn’t always work as efficiently or harmoniously as it could. One contractor will install part of the supply via their preferred system, whilst the other will add on the next bit without taking into consideration the other parts of the installation.
In some cases the work can be completely defective and in others the supply will often work but the chance of failure or problems later down the line are greatly increased.
This was the case at the site referenced above; numerous pumps had failed due to being overworked and burning out. This occurred because of several unrepaired leaks.
Had the system been fully integrated, the leak would have been flagged up by a monitoring system before the pumps failed and needed to be replaced. Thus the cost of the replacement pumps and the mains water usage bills would have been completely avoided.
The second problem with a mismatched water supply is that it creates confusion amongst the end user about who is actually responsible for the supply and who to contact in case of a problem. This can lead to increased downtime and fixes taking longer than they really need to.
Any end user of a borehole ideally needs to know the following about their private water supply:
- Who is responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the borehole?
- Where is the source?
- What infrastructure is there as part of the supply system – storage tanks, water treatment etc.?
- What are the specific arrangements for maintenance and emergencies?
Those types of problems are just one of the reasons why many of our customers taking advantage of our complete private water supply management service.
This entails a full management of the private water supply and associated infrastructure. Including looking after your licence conditions, servicing your filtration at regular, and appropriate intervals, liaising with regulators, regular sampling, understanding and complying with the Private Water Supply Regulations 2009 and providing a rapid call out service should there be an emergency or breakdown.
If you’d like to speak to use about our full private water supply management offering then give us a call on 01765 640 646 or drop us a message via our contact form.
