When Mark Aure, owner and operator of Pipe Detectives of Fargo, ND, started his sewer inspection and cleaning business he also wanted to help farmers protect one of their biggest investments—drain tile systems. He spent 18 years in the construction industry, much of which was devoted to installing drain tile systems, and he knew he wanted to continue working with farmers to make sure they got quality installations. Drain tile systems remove excess water from soil. These systems alleviate saturated soil conditions, maintaining optimal moisture for plant growth. Oversaturated soil can kill or damage crops by depriving roots of oxygen (source).

Most successful business ideas spark when you least expect them. This couldn’t be more true in the case of Calgary Sewer Scope founders Jamie Hannaford, a full-time firefighter, and Nicholas Whittaker, a full-time realtor. In 2014, they were enjoying a family Thanksgiving dinner when they found themselves discussing with a guest the importance of residential sewer scope inspection prior to buying a house. By the end of the conversation, they conceived the idea for Calgary Sewer Scope and worked to bring the company to life over the course of the next eleven months. In September 2015, Calgary Sewer Scope began serving residential customers. Within two short years, the company expanded its service offerings to include municipal sewer inspections, cross bore inspections for utility companies, and pre- and post- acceptance inspections. Soon they will start offering point repair for sewers. They now have three full-time staff members and work with multiple subcontractors to fulfill the needs of their business.

A preventative maintenance program for sewer inspection equipment is the first step a municipality should take to maximize uptime and equipment longevity. Raleigh’s Department of Transportation, Stormwater Maintenance Unit (SMU) can attest to this. “We inspect 60,000 linear feet of pipe annually with our Quickview zoom camera and ROVVER X sewer camera,” says Don Hickman, CCTV Operations Crew Supervisor. Their ROVVER X system has been in service since early 2014. To this day, members of the community congratulate the crew on their new truck. “It is so gratifying to tell curious community members that our truck and equipment has been in service since 2014 and is on the road nearly every day. You can see the level of respect we gain in their eyes—so many municipal workers get a bad rap for not caring about taxpayers’ investments.”

Gas line cross bores are a huge danger lurking underground. With the popularity of trenchless construction methods and the prevalence of legacy cross bores, locating and eliminating them is critical to preventing potentially deadly explosions. Full lateral inspections using a lateral launch crawler are advised where legacy cross bores are a risk, and wherever new HDD gas line installation is completed. Learn about preventing, detecting and repairing cross bores with this curated selection of expert articles:

More than 55% of motor failures occur because of overheating caused by excessive resistance (Bright Hub Engineering). The two biggest enemies of motors are heat and moisture. Crawlers are sealed against moisture, but their motors encounter resistance daily and in many forms. Increasingly, crawler manufacturers are focusing on designs that mitigate the damaging effects of resistance, with the goal of enhancing their equipment’s travel range, reliability and cost of ownership.

Kyle Baxter started working in the sewer inspection and cleaning industry as his grandfather’s apprentice at the age of ten. Today, his company is one of the biggest sewer inspection and maintenance contractors in Iowa. AccuJet manages the maintenance, cleaning and emergency callouts for 45 cities and performs cleaning and televising for 80% of the Des Moines metro area’s new developments.

Hillsboro, Oregon's proximity to Downtown Portland, the Pacific Coast, and the Cascade and Coastal Mountains Ranges make it a popular community to live and work, as do local employers like Intel, Nike and Salesforce. Rapid growth over the last two decades in Hillsboro has forced the city to expand its waste water infrastructure, a challenge compounded by the Pacific Northwest’s high precipitation. The City’s Sanitary and Storm Water Division manages 1.3 million feet of sanitary and 1.4 million feet of storm lines while constantly adding more. Their entire system gets inspected on an eight-year rotation—keeping the expectations on their sewer inspection crew and the equipment they use very high. “Being able to carry out a successful sewer asset management program requires two key ingredients: reliable equipment and a seasoned staff that believes in preventative maintenance,” says Justin Jensen, Hillsboro’s Sanitary & Storm Water Utilities Manager.

As technology advances, everything around us gets smarter, from refrigerators that can text you a picture of their contents to alarm clocks that track your sleep cycles to wake you up at the perfect time. Sewer inspection crawlers are getting smarter too, using digital technologies like CANbus to extend their capabilities, deliver greater intelligence and functionality, consume fewer resources, and allow for a more customizable, upgradeable sewer inspection system.

When evaluating a sewer inspection crawler, it’s important to determine how well it adapts to different challenges—both current and anticipated. To make this determination, it helps to look at whether the crawler was designed as a standalone system or a modular platform. A standalone system is one which serves a narrow purpose; it does one kind of inspection (CCTV, SAT, side scanning, laser profiling, etc.) within a limited range of applications (combinations of line size, condition and material). So for instance, if you buy a CCTV inspection crawler to do mainline inspection, and you later want to expand into lateral launch inspections, your only option is to buy a new, separate crawler system: crawler, reel, controls, and truck.

Being in the industry for over a decade teaches you a lot about your business, the community you serve and the equipment you need. Tailoring your capabilities to your clients' needs is crucial to success. When Advanced Underground, a Michigan-based rehabilitation contractor, needed a new lateral launch system to expand their business they knew exactly what capabilities to look for and how they wanted their inspection truck built out. So they set out to investigate at the 2016 Waste & Wastewater Equipment, Treatment & Transport (WWETT) Show.