Customer Spotlight: The City of Concord, California

A little over two years ago, the staff at City of Concord faced a predicament: should they continue to use a system that was increasingly unreliable, couldn’t fit in 60% of their pipes, and was becoming more and more expensive to repair—or should they cut their losses and invest in another system? “Our inspection needs kept growing and our old system could never keep up,” says Jim Stearns, Camera Operator at the City of Concord. “When Pete Carlson of Haaker Equipment started demoing the ROVVER X, it was as if it was made for our sewer system.”

Nestled in the San Francisco Bay Area, the City of Concord is under 31 square miles, with over 550 miles of sewer pipe ranging from 6” to 36” in diameter. “Over 300 miles of pipe in our system is 6 inch, but our old system just couldn’t operate in it,” continued Stearns. “The crawler had too many exposed wires and therefore was constantly under repair, couldn’t steer in our pipes, and was just getting too expensive to operate.” Pete Carlson of Haaker Equipment helped the city retrofit its existing truck with a new ROVVER X system.

With the ROVVER X, the City of Concord’s sewer inspection crew can field-reterminate their cable and perform other routine maintenance. “The ROVVER X is so much easier to service—there are fewer wires and it is a better engineered product overall. Of the three systems we've owned, this one is in a class of its own for ease of use, cost of operation, and reliability,” says Stearns. “Above all, if there is an issue or if we need preventative maintenance, Haaker Equipment’s authorized mobile service truck comes out and does whatever is needed—onsite”.

Today, the City of Concord inspects about 2000 feet of sewer pipe per day. “We’ve driven our ROVVER X over 350 miles in the last 2.5 years. The system is smaller, lighter, and more reliable than our previous system,” says Stearns. “Our routine repair costs are only 25% of what they were—the system is paying for itself in productivity and efficiency. We run our crawler every day of the work week and it's normal for us to go months at a time without the slightest problem—which is amazing given the harsh environment it operates in, and the fact that with our previous system we crossed our fingers every morning that we could make it through an entire day problem free. We couldn’t be happier with our decision to cut our losses and purchase a new ROVVER X sewer inspection camera.”

Ready to see the ROVVER X sewer inspection crawler in action? Scheduled a free demo today: