Fort Frances town council approved a permanent repair solution to a repeatedly cracking water tower pipe.
The pipe was topic of discussion at last night’s meeting of Fort Frances town council. The pipe was initially reported to be cracked last January after the line had frozen. Since then, inspections and repairs were completed to the first occurring damages. During the installation of a new heat trace line, additional cracks were found and repaired. After running the circulation pumps on the tower, more leaks were noticed on the line.
The town is now concerned that there may be microfractures along the entire length of the stainless-steel pipe, which may not have been found right away.
Regular repairs to the tower result in extremely high costs with the need for scaffolding to be repeatedly put up. Due to the high costs, the town has opted to replace the length of pipe completely, said manager of operations and facilities Travis Rob.
“We’re talking about around 100 feet of scaffolding up the inside of the of the tower, and it definitely weighed into the decision to abandon trying to repair and move to just a full replacement, because once that scaffolding is gone, it’s not something that goes back up easily or inexpensively,” Rob said.
“We definitely want to make sure that when this is all said and done, we’re not going to be revisiting it in six months, a year, 10 years, 15 years, 30 years.”
Scaffolding is already in place due to the nature of work being done on the tower previously. The town has decided to utilize it while it is already in place to mitigate costs of having to have it re-installed.
The total cost of the work on the frozen line comes to $281,468.23 plus taxes, Rob said, which includes the additional labour and materials costs. This process will include removing the old line, purchasing the pipe and installing it and reinstalling the heat trace to the line.
Funds for the repairs are being taken from the town’s Sewer and Water Reserve funds.
