By Mindy Ragan Wood
Staff Writer
For some Piedmont residents on the west side of town, water pressure is too low or too high. Although it’s a legitimate problem, some residents say water pressure is too low while others contend it’s too high.
Dennis Weir told city council members that his water pressure is so high he will eventually be forced to replace the pipes under his house if it is not fixed.
“We live in Skyline and the pressure out there, our pressure is at a dangerously high level,” Weir said during the July meeting. “We had two failures recently on our outside faucets. We had a plumber come out and he put a measurement of 120 (pounds per square inch). He was quite surprised it was that high. So, we called the city, city responded in a timely manner to our phone calls. They spoke to the plumber and also said they’d bring someone out.”
Weir said city staff promptly came out and checked the pressure level.
“We appreciate that, but the response was not one we were looking for because they said, ‘we’re not going to change the pressure,’” he said. “So, we don’t understand why that response would be that way if the pressure was so high. Our pipes are going to fail eventually. We’re not plumbers, we’re not experts but the experts we’ve talked with said eventually you’re going to have failure if something isn’t done.”
Weir’s councilman Melissa Ashford said she would look into the matter. Ashford could not be reached for comment.
City Manager Jason Orr said the home is near a main water line and a pumping station where pressure can be higher, but the responsibility falls to the homeowner to install a pressure reduction valve.
“We have to maintain psi at 25 in the entire system. Right at your pumping station, you have a higher psi and it’s up to the homeowners to install one if they feel like it’s going to do damage to their own home,” Orr said.
Pressure reduction valves sell for around $150, but the cost to install one can range from $500 to $800. Mike Boelte, a plumber for Lakeshore Plumbing in Okahoma City, said new homes come with a pressure reduction valve.
“All the new homes I’ve seen since 2013 have those already,” Boelte said.
Weir did not say during the meeting when his home was built.
HIGH AND LOW PRESSURE
Councilman John Brown, who has spearheaded water studies in the last 10 years, said the water pressure is a concern but it is being addressed.
“I’ve talked to the city manager (Jason Orr) and they’re going to look at it,” Brown said. “He’s (Weir) just real close to the main line that feeds the system over to the west side. We’re trying to pump as much as we can to the west side.”
Brown said residents who live near the water tower could also be experiencing high water pressure or those who live in low-lying areas where a pump is forcing water up the line.
Some homes to the west near Okarche are experiencing water pressure so low that residents report they have almost no water.
“There’s a big leak over there somewhere,” Brown said. “They’re trying to find it.”
Orr said they have had to pull the city’s public works employees from other jobs to look for the leak. The effort sounds like looking for a needle in a haystack.
“They have to physically walk the lines to look for any kind of wet spots and it’s very difficult on smaller lines to identify those,” Orr said. “On a 10 inch or 18 inch pipeline you’re going to have a blow out, see water shooting up in the air. With the smaller two-inch lines it’s nearly impossible to find those leaks. Right now, we have all of public works crews all out there looking for the problem.”
In a small department, that means other tasks are set aside.
“We had to pull them from their other jobs today from mowing, all the other activities that cities expect them to do, to go outside city limits on a two-inch line somewhere but it is very important because those people have been in and out of water a couple days,” Orr said. “We’re trying to insure they have water. So right now, it is a high priority.”
