Our Lateral Launch Televising Service is a helpful tool to Municipalities to assess the condition of private sanitary sewer services. Private sanitary sewer services if older and in poor condition can often allow ground water to leak into the private service when the ground is saturated, for example, after a heavy rain. This process is called Infiltration and Inflow (I&I). This excess ground water then flows from the private service into the city’s sanitary sewer system. This excess water causes the city sewer piping system to be overburdened which can lead to costly back-ups in private properties. In addition this excess ground water becomes contaminated with the sanitary sewer water which can significantly multiply the amount of effluent wastewater that the waste water treatment plant has to treat and clean. This costs money to treat and also overburdens waste water treatment plant sometimes to the point, that the plant is incapable of treating the water and must discharge the diluted waste water without treatment in order to avoid the flooding of the system. The EPA has been making a big push throughout the United States for Municipalities to reduce the amount of ground water that leaks into municipal sanitary sewer systems. The technical term for this ground water leaking into the sewer system is referred to “I&I” Infiltration and Inflow. By televising private sanitary sewer services with a lateral launch camera this can be a good first step because it gives the civil engineer or city the information of the condition of the sewer and can help them make decisions as to what the best solution would be to fix the problem of reducing I&I which saves money and protects ground water and rivers some of our greatest natural resources.
Empire Pipe Services’ Lateral Launch Camera can also be used to assist utility contractors such as boring or excavating contractors, utility services such as natural gas, electrical power lines and potable water lines have been increasingly installed using trench-less boring methods. Due to this new method occasionally these utilities have been bored through existing utilities in the ground such as private sanitary sewer services. Sometimes when boring new natural gas lines private sanitary sewer systems have accidentally been bored though potentially restricting, blocking, or even collapsing the existing private sanitary sewer service. The danger is that the sanitary sewer service can start backing up to the point where it floods the property or worse, when trying to clean the private sewer service due to this issue the cleaning equipment can hit this newly bored utility line which can sometimes be a new natural gas line and in some cases cause an explosion. Due to this concern boring companies and utility companies have sought out this lateral launch service to reduce the potential risk by investigating where existing private sanitary sewer services are located in the ground in order to help avoid them during the boring process. It also can be used after a boring project to verify that no private sanitary services were compromised during the project.