Water pressure project requires patience
The North Pressure Zone water pressure project is continuing.
The construction of the three booster stations, three pressure valves and all other necessary equipment has been completed.
The system was started up about two months ago, and the pressure was increased to approximately 10 psi.
But with any new system such as this, there are many initial issues that could occur as the system gets up to full operation and increased pressure.
We experienced many water main breaks that were expected each time the pressure was increased. This is normal as the weak points in the system create water main breaks.
About four to five weeks ago, a problem arose with the new SCADA system (computer software) that was installed with the new booster stations. SCADA is the monitoring system used for the communications between the water towers, booster stations, and the water plant. We are now using cellular communication instead of antennas.
We had to bring the system back to the original pressure for about two weeks to get the monitoring system repaired. We think that we have worked out these issues.
The booster stations were then started back up and have been operating for the past three weeks. We are slowly bringing the pressure up to the 20 psi increase we were planning to reach. So far, we have increased the pressure about 16 psi.
We will continue to increase the pressure very slowly over the next weeks to months. We will most likely continue experiencing some water main breaks, and Suez will continue to make the repairs.
Any increase such as this must be done slowly to prevent any major disruptions to the piping distribution system. If the booster system should ever go down again in the future, the water pressure in the system will reduce back down to the approximately 40 psi pressure that it was prior to installing the new booster pumps.
So please be patient as this is a slow process to reach the desired pressure.