The underground water leak has been repaired

Everyone on site will probably be pleased to hear that this serious problem has been resolved.

The leak had progressively worsened, and was losing about a cubic metre-and-a-half an hour of late, at a cost of £1.92 per cubic metre. Those fond of arithmetic can work out the annual cost of this to the Council Tax payers of Cardiff.

The contractors, Malcom Thompson Ltd., located the leak by successively halving the suspect length of pipe with isolating valves until they got it down to a length which could be economically replaced. They did the latter by threading smaller, 32mm MDPE pipe through the old apparatus, which avoided expensive and disruptive trench digging.

During the course of this work it was established that the leak was under the track which runs beside the tennis courts. There was some increase in greenery of the vegetation at the surface, but nothing striking. Malcolm explained that the water easily runs away and disperses through the alluvial gravel which lies beneath the soil here.

Here’s a plan of our installation as it stands, which shows the general location of its main features:

Note: mobile device users may need to download the file to view it.

Here are some pictures showing the replacement method:

We extend our sincere thanks to Rhodri Edwards, Technical Manager, Parks for overseeing this work, to its Project Manager Mark Davies, and to Malcolm Thompson and his staff for their professional work and for their genial presence on the site, but especially to our own group of volunteers for their turning off the water at night until these repairs could be done.

PPA Website Team