Winthrop water interruption

[tomandmonica]

We are now in our third week without water to our two year old house in the Housing Trust development in the Cascade Condos area above the PO in Winthrop. It seems that there are no reliable maps that the Winthrop water service can access to enable them to locate the valves that would turn off the high pressure main lines so that they can go about the business of thawing the ice blockages that may be located in the branch lines to two houses, or may be in the main lines themselves (less likely, though possible since those houses on the street that have had water, could be getting it from the loop that exists). In any case, they are unable to find the shut off valves to the main line without accurate maps and they have no tools to locate those cast iron caps at ground level that cover the pipe down to the valve. Here is the question: does anyone in the Winthrop area have a metal detector that would be able to find an 8? inch cast iron plate at ground level beneath two to four feet of snow. Unfortunately not an easy to sweep level surface - mounds of snow from road plowing and, remarkably enough, no clear notion as to just where these useful valves might be located. Any treasure hunters with a high quality metal detector in the area want to give it a try? Being without household water for weeks is getting a little old, and I would offer some financial compensation for the effort.

[RAK]

Winthrop should have as-built drawings and there should be locate wire on the main lines. They used to have a Schonstedt GA-52 Magnetic Locator that should be able to locate the valve boxes at over that depth. If thier locator is gone or inoperable, Twisp used to have one also.
Frozen meters?

[Pericles]

360-391-7842 might have idea for water.

[tomandmonica]

Thanks, RAK. I agree that Winthrop should have the maps and the trace wire and the finder, but if they do, they don't know where they are. Various employees and the supervisor have been onsite several times in the more than two weeks this has been going on, but without any positive results. Frozen meter: ours was not frozen, that of the house across the road was frozen, but thawing it did not affect the blockage. They have hot water pump device that has been used successfully in Omak and Twisp, but cannot deploy it here because they cannot find the valves to cut off the high pressure main lines.

[tomandmonica]

RAK. EDIT. They do have a locator, but, for some reason, have concluded that it cannot locate a cast iron meter cover under the snow pack.

[cwesthoff40]

I do a lot of underground utility design work that includes showing existing underground utilities. If I can't get accurate GIS mapping info one of my useful fallbacks is getting developer info from as-builts. It will probably take a bit more sleuthing than it does in the city but if you can get your hands on an as-built that has surveyed existing utilities somewhere close to the area in question from someone who has recently had permit work done you might get lucky on narrowing down the location. It's been my experience that the locating tool doesn't have a problem finding it, you just have to be a lot closer to where it actually is. I'm not sure if this is helpful but thought I'd throw it out there, good luck!

Chris

[tomandmonica]

Thanks for the input, Chris. I haven't personally had access to any of this information - or perhaps I haven't pushed hard enough to gain that access. We were just informed that some information has been found and that a backhoe should show up this afternoon to scrape away the snow from the presumed location.

[Bcg]

Hey Tom, I have a metal locator that only detects ferrous metals. Let me know if you still need it.
Brad

[osprey]

I saw the water dept truck on your street today! Hope that means your situation has been resolved. What a long ordeal!

[tomandmonica]

Thanks for the offer, Brad. I was able to borrow a metal detector from a neighbor and the contractor who put in the water lines, Andy Oosterhoff, was able to come up to the site and give me clear directions for the search. The valves were nowhere near where the town of Winthrop thought they were. Unfortunately, the line thawing device was not able to get its hot water jet into the frozen part of the line so we are we are still where we were almost three weeks ago - line frozen between the meter and the main line with no quick resolution in the works.