The manhole must first be cleaned to establish a monitoring baseline, but installation took about 30 minutes per manhole and didn’t require confined space entry. The “smart” cover solution consists of a sonar attached beneath the cover that detects water level changes to within one-tenth of a foot radio transmitter and antenna on the cover top, which can be recessed if desired and chip that automates monitoring and alerting. “We wanted to see if automated monitoring could reduce the number of cleanings.” “It was a huge workload,” says Construction & Maintenance Director Alissa Lockett. An orange circle indicates a worrisome trend a red triangle is an alarm. On this map of the San Antonio Water System, green circles indicate normal status. When it detects a change, the system e-mails or texts the customer that something that may require action is happening. Smart Cover Systems The cover regularly scans each manhole, usually daily, searching for anomalous level or pattern changes associated with fats, oils, and grease (FOG) buildup, grit accumulation, roots, or pipe degradation. New regulations were being put in place, and overflows could cost cities as much as $10 a gallon.”
“They went out and asked public works directors and sewer system operators, ‘What keeps you up at night?’” says Jay Boyd, senior vice president of SmartCover Systems Inc. Drake had represented Escondido as a SDCWA board member for nine years. Quist had been on the board of directors for the Rincon del Diablo Municipal Water District in the City of Escondido, Calif., for 25 years and was director of the San Diego County Water Authority (SDCWA) board for 12 years. They’re simple, durable, and cheap fulfill their function perfectly and neither the material-cast iron-nor the circular shape admit of any flaws.Įven so, David Drake and Gregory Quist sensed an opportunity. In 2005, it wasn’t obvious that manhole covers needed to be improved or even that they could be improved. Because the product detects upstream and downstream changes, one cover can monitor several adjacent segments depending on pipe segment slope and manhole configuration. Smart Cover Systems The SmartCover is a remote field unit (RFU) consisting of ultrasonic water level sensor with 0.0625-inch resolution and recording level measurements every 12 minutes, satellite transceiver for two-way wireless communication, two-year battery, brackets for connecting these instruments to the cover, cloud storage for data storage and real-time analysis, and web-based viewing dashboard.