Water Main Bursts in Plumstead

Well it’s not exactly the type of water outage we’ve been discussing here on the Water Solutions website, but it sure was an interesting taste of the things to come.

Picture it… you wake up on Saturday morning, ready to start the day with your usual cup of coffee and a shower. You head to the kitchen to fill the kettle, turn on the tap and… NOTHING ! “That’s weird” you think, and head to the bathroom to try the basin or bath or shower and… NOTHING ! Now you go from “that’s weird” to “what the heck?”

So, gown on, you stroll out to the front garden to go check the water mains tap cause maybe someone is playing silly buggers with you, but before you get to the tap you see a river of water and mud flowing down the road. Now you go from “what the heck?” to “holy sh..!”

Now i am horrified to say that thanks to an uncharged camera i don’t have any pics of the Nile river floating past my house, or of my son pretending he was at the beach first thing in the morning. Can you picture it ? A six year old, still in his pyjamas, sopping wet playing what appeared to be a Cape Town summer version of a snow ball fight right outside the front gate.

It’s a burst water main the department of water affairs technician tells me. Happens quite a bit around here due to the old water supply infrastructure. Every time they fix a burst, another one happens due to the strain put on the old pipe by the fixed section.

And while the cost in lost water and impact on the Cape Town water supply is obvious, the cost of the damage caused to the road etc is pretty hectic too. Check out this hole eroded away by the water, the blue pipe is the new fixed bit. The hole was huge, this pic was taken after they started filling it up.

And after the guys have fixed the water main, they have to flush the entire pipe to make sure there is no air in it and to make sure us good suburban folk dont get mud coming out of our taps. So what happens ? After loosing hundreds of thousands of good clean drinking water to faulty (read: outdated and crumbling) water infrastructure, they turn on the fire hydrant and any thoughts of water conservation go out the window (or down the drain shall i say) as they waste another couple of thousand litres. I reckon you could fill a swimming pool in half an hour with that much water. Don’t get me wrong, I understand they have to do it, but man does the sight below make my heart sore. I really hope we don’t have issues like this or worse with our water supply during the world cup 2010.

So what did we learn ? Simple.
1 – It’s a real pain in the butt having no water in your taps. In fact, I’d suggest the Eskom power outages are a walk in the park compared to this.
2 – Our water infrastructure hidden beneath our pavements is not what we think it is.
3 – Kids can have fun anywhere !!!
4 – I REALLY wish i had a rainwater harvesting solution. Cause with these babies, water outages or shortages are NO PROBLEM.

Cheers, Shaun.

PS: A special mention to the guys who fixed the burst water main on a Saturday morning. Amazing stuff. They were friendly, efficient and once they were gone it was like they were never there. VERY IMPRESSED WITH YOUR WORK. Well done.