Sales Triple from Prior Year on Finding Defects in CIPP Rehabilitation Projects That Go Undetected by Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) Inspection
December 8, 2014, Sacramento, CA — Electro Scan Inc. today announced the start of its twelfth project in less than sixty-days and disclosed that Company revenues would triple in its current fiscal year ending December 31, 2014 due to unprecedented growth in sales and services from its patent-pending pipe leak detection technology.
In recent weeks, the Company completed an 8,000ft (2.4km) project in British Columbia, Canada where sixty-five (65) sewer laterals and twenty-one (21) sewer mains were surveyed, and a 15,000ft (4.6km) sewer assessment project in Pennsylvania.
Today, the Company begins an 18,000ft (5.5km) project in the Carolinas, with earlier projects in Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington.
Next week, the Company visits Japan to install and field train one of the country’s leading sewer contractors.
Other recent sales have included the City of Tallahassee and Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Department, Florida, working with the Company’s newest dealer, Orlando, FL-based, RUTT, Inc., purchasing their own Electro Scan ES-620 unit for projects and sales demonstrations.
“We are delighted with the rapid adoption of Electro Scan,” states Mark Grabowski, Vice President, Electro Scan. “While we welcome large metropolitan sewer utilities and their sewer contractors as Electro Scan customers, we are delighted with sales to so many agencies managing less than 100mi (161km) of sewer main.”
A Quantum Leap in the Identification of Groundwater Infiltration
Electro Scan revolutionizes the condition of assessment of sewer and water pipes, once dominated by closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras used to see defects and legacy tools using acoustic sensors to listen for defects.
In contrast, the Electro Scan technology uses a patent-pending low-voltage high frequency current designed in accordance with ASTM F2550-13 to locate and measure water quantities able to enter or exit cracks in a pipe wall, defective joints, or poorly connected service laterals.
An advanced cloud application allows data to be immediately available for post-processing and reporting of defect flows shown in gallons per minute (GPM) or litres per second (LPS).
The Electro Scan ES-620 is designed as an add-on product for existing CCTV trucks and vans with a retail price of approximately $200,000 (€165,000). Its ES-38 and ES-225 are designed for smaller diameter pipes with probes range from $24,000 to $45,000 (€20,000 to €37,000). Cloud licensing and ongoing support for customers, contractors, and consulting engineers, are separately priced.
Due to the requirement to compare Electro Scan results with previously televised inspection results, Electro Scan certified sewer contractors may charge from $3 to $7 per foot (€10 to €24 per meter) for sewer assessments and CIPP certifications.
Many projects now require their sewers to be scanned, first, so that CCTV can correctly record other physical conditions surrounding the Electro Scan identified defect.
Sharon Purnell, Operations Manger, Hamilton Township Municipal Authority, PA (HTMA), a seventy-mile sewer network, recently purchased an Electro Scan ES-620 to re-evaluate its sewer mains.
“We enjoy sharing our success with Electro Scan with others in Pennsylvania,” states Purnell. “We have performed over 40 scans since Electro Scan was installed in our existing TV van and have been actively re-prioritizing our rehabilitation plans based on data in our licensed Critical Sewer® cloud application.”
Joining HTMA in upgrading their existing TV truck with Electro Scan or benefiting from contract services, include the City of O’Fallon (MO), Twin City Sewer District (OH), Tri-Cities North Regional Wastewater Authority (OH), and Upper Montgomery Joint Authority (PA).
In England, Electro Scan (UK) Limited recently began offering services to the twelve British water and sewer companies where it is being called a quantum leap in the identification of sewers subject to groundwater infiltration. Electro Scan has also been called ‘the most influential development since the Strategic Rehabilitation Manual (SRM)’ was first published in the 1980s.
“It’s no longer if a utility will be purchasing Electro Scan, but when,” states Carissa Boudwin, Director of Sales and Marketing, Electro Scan Inc.
Drawbacks of Legacy Inspection Tools
Repair, rehabilitation, and renewal decisions have traditionally relied on a number of legacy inspection tools that have been unable to adequately assess or prioritize needed capital improvements.
“We find many certified TV operators using the highest resolution cameras, but frequently miss or incorrectly record the biggest defects found by Electro Scan,” comments Chuck Hansen, Chairman, Electro Scan and a public works industry pioneer.
“Whether evaluating sewer mains or laterals with cameras that can pan, tilt, and zoom, operators are not able to look inside a pipe’s joint to see if there are gaps, missing mortar, or loose gaskets that can provide a pathway for water. At least, not with the accuracy or consistency of Electro Scan,” continues Hansen.
“Earlier this year we scanned a 365ft (111m), 6” (150mm) diameter, vitrified clay pipe (VCP) where the TV report showed zero defects,” states Hansen. “The sewer was located in an area that had an average 30 ft (9m) elevation, is protected by a series of levees and prone to flooding during wet weather events.”
“While the CCTV report was completed in accordance with a nationally recognized sewer inspection standard, we found 93 defects with the largest defects at nearly every joint and having an estimated 286.1 gallons per minute (16.9 liters per second) of defect flow,” states Hansen.
“At 2 o’clock in the afternoon with clear skies the pipe was nearly half full of water, so you could tell something was wrong,” states Hansen.
“Anyone who has worked in our industry knows that you can have two operators trained by the same trainer, at the same time, looking at the same video, and both operators can still record different defect codes,” states Boudwin.
Flooding, sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs), and sinkholes often result from decaying sewer mains and stormwater pipes where water leaks into the system through undetected cracks and defects. Sometimes called infiltration, once water enters the sewer, it risks backing up into homes and businesses.
Sewers at full capacity often leach out through defective joints, slowly liquefying the soil surrounding a pipe and then appearing as silt on the bottom of a sewer pipe. After a few years of this daily process, an empty space or void can be created. If a sewer lies underneath a busy street or intersection, a vehicle can find itself falling into a sinkhole.
“I know cities that own ten or more vactors that regularly remove silt from their sewers so back-ups don’t occur,” states Hansen. “Unfortunately, these same cities don’t think anything is wrong with their sewers because their recent CCTV inspections don’t show cracks or defective joints.”
Recent US EPA funded studies and international benchmarks contradict claims that the majority of inflow and infiltration is coming from service laterals, which in many cases are inaccessible to sewer authorities.
Continues Hansen, “I constantly hear that, ‘We’ve televised all our sewer mains and they’re OK, so I&I must be coming from laterals on the customer’s property.’ The problem: the right technology to correctly assess their mainlines wasn’t available to show which sewers needed fixing. I think the pendulum that once swung towards rehabilitating laterals has now swung back to focus on sewer mains, especially since there is now a cost-effective assessment tool.”
“Given the high cost of lining individual sewer laterals, that may not need it, sewer utilities are advised to re-direct their attention on sewer mains; especially, recently lined pipes,” advises Hansen.
“It’s easy to see why so many utilities are entering their third and fourth round of system-wide assessment, sometimes called Sanitary Sewer Evaluation Studies (SSES),” states Grabowksi.
“Earlier this year we scanned a sewer pipe that had a higher defect flow rate, after it was lined, then before” states Boudwin.
“In another case, we scanned a partially lined pipe, only to find that the lining was good, but that the rest of the sewer main had uniform defects through the rest of the sewer main and should have been repaired, too,” continues Boudwin.
“A test section of CIPP may pass laboratory testing, but the days of using CCTV to approve entire CIPP projects, are over. Today, utilities must require contractors to record pre- and post-CIPP defect flow measurements, to quantify the reduction of infiltration,” states Boudwin.
“CCTV is a great tool, especially for assessing cave-ins, alignment problems, debris, and grease,” states
Hansen. “It’s just not the right tool for finding sources of infiltration or certifying CIPP. That’s what Electro Scan is designed to do.”
Credited with co-developing the CCTV standards used by over 250 TV trucks for the 1990 EPA Region 6 City of Houston Physical Inspection Project, Chuck Hansen has seen many of new technologies over the years. As founder of Hansen Information Technologies, sold in 2007 to Infor Global for a reported $100 million, his former customers had amassed over 7 million CCTV defects from over 1 million CCTV reports.
In 2015, a new chapter on Electro Scan will be included to the Seventh Edition of the Wastewater Collection Maintenance and Operations Manual, Volume 1, often referred to as the ‘holy grail’ of the sewer industry and cited by the US EPA for completing mandatory CMOM and SSES reporting required as part of administrative orders and consent decrees.
About Electro Scan
Founded in 2011, the Company designs, develops, markets, and sells advanced detection instrumentation, in addition to mobile and cloud computing applications, that automatically locate, measure, and report defect flows in pre- and post-rehabilitated sewer and water pipes. Offices are located in London, Frankfurt, Toronto, and Melbourne, Australia, with corporate offices in Sacramento, California.
“We are delighted to be recognized by our colleagues,” stated Chuck Hansen, CEO of Electro Scan and wastewater pioneer. “Not since the introduction of TV cameras to televise sewers has a technology so quickly and radically changed the way we locate defects and certify repairs as leak-free. Electro Scan changes everything: from deciding which pipes to fix, to determining final acceptance of point repairs and lining projects.”
A benchmark comparison of water pressure testing and Electro Scan was conducted in 2012 at the Milwaukee Metro Sewer District (MMSD). In a project jointly sponsored by the Water Environment Research Foundation (WERF) and the USEPA, the study specifically compared Electro Scan to a number of condition assessment techniques to evaluate sewer laterals. While pressure testing identified a sewer lateral as PASSING, indicating a leakage rate of about 1 gallon per minute, Electro Scan found a significant number of leaks on the same pipe, including accurately locating specific defect locations, size, and estimated peak Gallons per Minute (GPM). Encrustations at defective joints had temporarily re-sealed defects in the lateral causing pressure testing to record a False-Positive result. 
Advantages of the Electro Scan technology include its ability to scan pipes that are either full or partially full of water and provide automated leak detection information, including location to the nearest 0.4 inches (1 cm) and estimated peak GPM. While CCTV cameras are rarely, if ever, used during wet weather, Electro Scan, combined with CCTV, provides a year-round solution.
