Carlisle’s largest cleaning job gets going in Kingmoor next week as engineers begin sprucing up the inside of every last one of the city’s water mains pipes.
The mammoth task involves the painstaking flushing of around 400km of small water pipes serving about 33,000 homes and business.
It’s all part of a multi-million-pound effort by water company United Utilities to clean and refurbish all the city’s water pipes to improve the quality and reliability of its tap water.
About 30km of the city’s largest and oldest water trunk mains have already been upgraded. Now all that remains is the smaller pipes running beneath most of the city’s smaller streets and byways. The work should be completed by about the end of the year.
United Utilities’ third party co-ordinator, Paul Wheadon, said, unlike the trunk mains cleaning programme, work on the smaller pipes would not affect traffic and would mostly be done at night when people were using less water.
“The city’s water mains network is a buried gem of engineering but over the decades tiny bits of naturally occurring metals and minerals have built up at the bottom of the pipes. Normally, they’re settled but sometimes they can get disturbed and mix with the water, making it look brown. It’s not very pleasant and this project will stop it happening,” he said.
Work will take place on weeknights between 11pm and 5.30am in small phases and for the most part, will involve repeatedly emptying and refilling a section of pipe under pressure – a process called flushing – until the water runs clear.
Tankers may be used to maintain water supplies during this process but will be parked away from homes wherever possible.
Customers will get information cards in advance of any work in their street and access to properties will be maintained.
