Reservoir cracks still leaking

A reservoir that is part of the City of Powell River’s drinking water system upgrade project still has cracks that are leaking.

Jeremy Sagebiel, engineering technologist, said the contractor is returning to Powell River at the end of the month and will be trying to resolve the issue, among others.

The reservoir is one part of an almost $9-million project that included connecting the water main from Townsite to Wildwood, constructing a booster pump station at Aspen Avenue and Cedar Street and a UV (ultraviolet) facility, along with the two-celled reservoir, on Haslam Street.

After the reservoir, which holds about 7.75 million litres of water, was filled initially, water leaked from cracks, which city officials said was normal. They also said it was up to the contractor, Maple Reinders Inc., to seal the cracks and to ensure the structure was water tight before the city accepted completion.

Sagebiel said the majority of the leaks were sealed after the reservoir was drained and the contractor applied epoxy on the inside of the tanks.

“The bulk of the cracks, I’d say 95 per cent or so, [were] resolved by that,” he said “The remaining cracks were identified once again and the contractor was alerted.”

The contractor returned and did additional patching on the outside of the tank, Sagebiel said. “There was a question if the outside patching would be effective, because if the water gets into the thickness of the concrete wall, it could simply travel somewhere else and weep out on the exterior again,” he said. “We gave the contractor the benefit of the doubt to give them a try with that approach and that new product.”

Subsequently, staff noticed that method didn’t solve the issue, Sagebiel added, the cracks weren’t sealed properly and they alerted the contractor once again.

The contractor is returning at the end of the month to complete some other deficiencies, Sagebiel said. “They have noted to us that they’re going to look at those cracks again and resolve them,” he said. “We do have the one-year warranty minimum on those cracks, so it’s a work in progress to fine tune every single one of them to prevent water from either weeping or leaking or seeping out 100 per cent.”

Sagebiel has taken pictures of the cracks to document the seepage, he added, and to show how different weather scenarios exaggerate the weeping marks.

While substantial completion has been issued on the project, Sagebiel said, total completion has not. The earliest that would happen is the end of March, he said, “if everything goes well.”

Other minor deficiencies include light bulbs on indicator lights inside the facility and some fine-tuning of the heating system. The main deficiency is the in-line flow meter that measures how much water is discharged from the reservoir. As previously reported by the Peak, the meter was damaged during construction. Sagebiel said the replacement for the meter had to be specially manufactured. “That’s why there has been such a long delay in resolving the minor issues,” he said.