The impacts of extensive excavation for utility maintenance and repair are felt more now than ever. The number of cars on UK roads have bloated from a measely 14 million in 1976 to a whopping 34 million today. This means that every excavation is causing disruption to twice as much traffic. But how can we alleviate the impacts of these essential works?
Increasingly the answer to that questions has become trenchless technology. Less excavations, less trenches, less disruption. By providing technologies that can service significant lengths of pipework through one insertion, Synthotech is able to provide a significant reduction in costs on trenching and reinstatement, and reduce the impacts on drivers and consumers. We are the industry leaders in live potable water inspection and leak detection equipment, providing a wide range of cutting edge camera systems that we develop ourselves, and extensive offerings for both in-pipe and non-invasive underground water leak detection from respected global manufacturers like SebaKMT and FAST Gmbh.
What is Trenchless Technology?
Trenchless technology is equipment and methods for installing, inspecting, repairing or replacing underground utility infrastructure with no need for extensive excavation. Digging trenches for installation and replacement of infrastructure causes massive disruptions, particularly in extra-urban areas, and any technology to prevent it offers value to both utility providers and contractors, by reducing costs and speeding up maintenance works, and to consumers and traffic by reducing road works, road closures, and interruptions to service.
What Trenchless Technology does Synthotech offer?
The majority of our products adhere to the trenchless technology methodology, as we find that these approaches provide the best value to our customers. Our range of in-pipe inspection systems for both live gas and water pipes, the SynthoCAM platform, only require a single access point to survey up to 100m in each direction for our largest push rod camera system. This provides comprehensive visibility for pipe condition, identifying blockages, and surveying of fittings with no need to excavate the pipe. The system doesn’t even require the flow of water or gas to be interrupted.
Synthotech are proud distributors for a range of leak detection manufacturers, including Esders, SebaKMT, and FAST Gmbh. These technologies represent the most advanced developments in leak detection technology, and offer in-pipe leak detection options such as the PipeMic, a platform which we have iterated on to expand it’s cabapilities. We also offer heavy hitting non-invasive underground leak detection equipment, like the SebaKMT HL7000.
We offer services for gas pipe joint repair, using our robotic repair solution STASS, and are constantly expanding our capabilities to support gas and water networks.
What Trenchless Tech are we Developing?
We’re proud to be involved in the Pipebots for Rising Mains program, which we are collaborating on with Thames Water and the University of Sheffield, funded by the Ofwat Innovation Fund. The project will develop technology for condition assessment inspections in live sewer rising mains to enable rehabilitation works to be planned and prioritised, reducing the risk of failure leading to pollution. The project is deep into development, with prototypes being constructed, testing underway and field trials planned for the coming months.
We’re also working on a project to develop and create technologies for the repair of live potable water pipes, also in collaboration with Thames Water. The No Dig Technology project could provide a groundbreaking change to the way water utility providers conduct leak repair across their networks, where repairs have traditionally been performed using excavation and external repairs or replacement.
Synthotech have also been implementing trenchless technology into projects for UK telecom company, BT Openreach. The MicroBore project enables fibre installation teams to install kerb side connections to properties without the creation of trenches or large excavations, massively reducing the works time and disruption caused by the process. The system is officially at work across selected fibre installation teams at BT.
To learn more about our gas trenchless tech solutions, Click Here
To learn more about our potable water inspection systems, Click Here
To learn more about our range of leak detection systems, Click Here
