Water Tower Cleaning

[tsunamimike]

hey guys looking to get into the water tower cleaning business and wanted to pick someones brain a little bit that has done it before. yes i am a commercial diver and i started a business trying to clean ship hulls and am wanting to expand in cleaning the water towers and tanks in my area. i would just like the information needed to be sanitary and what standards i need to meet such as AWWA standards what are the standards? how do i get started in doing this the right way and the sanitary way? i already own the necessary pumps and vacuum hoses needed for sucking up sediments. i would also like to know about the solution that is used to wash down the diver before entering the water tank

[muddiver]

The diver should be washed down with chlorine, or chlorine bleach once he is fully suitted up. You will have to contain the waste water because it is considered a hazardous material in most states. The diver also is supposed to be fully contained in a dry suit with double exhaust valves. This means that you have to have a diving helmet that will mate to the dry suit. Neck and wrist seals just don't cut it. There are a lot of divers that will argue that their full face mask and a recreational dry suit is all you need, that is wrong because you are dealing with drinking water, not some marina that people pee in.

Safety wise, it is a minimum three man job, no shortcuts. It is very easy to get lost, entangled or have any other issue a diver can face cause a fatality. SCUBA is not a safe option. There is no safe air space in a drinking water tank, the chlorine vapor concentration inside is usually high enough to cause some serious respratory damage. Chlorine is used for disinfecting water because it distroys living things, like virus, bacteria and live tissue. You must be prepared to retreave an unconsious diver out of a poisonious environment, usually up a ladder while working off a platform a couple of hundred feet above the ground. A standby diver might be a viable option for safety, but he must be equipped with a dry suit and helmet or you will be paying to have the tank disinfected and tossed off the job site. Also, a standby diver requires a second tender. One diver = one tender, no exceptions.

Other than that it is all logistics, how do you get to the hatch, where do you put the compressor, where do you put the dive station, etc. If is a tall tank you might need four guys, a tender and dive supervisor at the hatch, diver in the tank and someone to the compressor and or run the radio and air rack.

The worst part is selling a three to four man team to the water company because they have probably hired scuba divers in the past who did not follow any OSHA requirements at a cut rate, and the water company people probably don't know d**k about what it takes to run an underwater operation.

[Herb-alaska]

You will also need a full proof way to lock out the water supply to that tank while the diver is in the water. I have seen a computer video creation on the water pressure /suction that is created at the outlet for items such as water towers, holding ponds and if the water is being drawn down and you are caught in the suction vortex then you are not coming out of the tank alive. It was crazy scary.

[tsunamimike]

thanks guys! yeah i remember the videos we had to watch at commercial dive school about cleaning water towers and the delta p that goes on inside because of the suction. along with all of the information given so far are there any types of organizations that my company must belong to in order be allowed to clean water towers? i dont want to be on the job and someone comes over and says "Hey! are you guys apart of ....BLAH BLAH BLAH?....No? well here is your $5000 fine" i definitely do not want anything like that to happen like i said i want to make sure everything is LEGAL both for sanitation reasons and paperwork reasons

[muddiver]

It's not required, but you might check out the American Water Works Association (AWWA) they pretty much write to rules on drinking water, and I know they have a manual on cleaning potable water tanks.

One outfit I worked with had a horse trailer looking rig that had the compressor, a generator, the dive control station with video and radio, and hose storage in it. The owner was out of Montana or Wyoming but he put a pretty sweet all weather rig together.

[akdeepdiver]

I am not a commercial diver, but I have been the second in command of one of the HAZMAT teams here in AK for the last 7 years. If I may throw in a few things for thought. If I am way off base, please correct me. 1. Muddiver is correct about the chlorine bleach. It can be very hazardous to the person exposed. That is why we use it to decontaminate people after being down range in a hot zone with it. By law, you will need to collect all of it when it is used to decon a person. This means you will need a retaining pool, pump, and storage capability when it is done. You will need some type of drum to store it in on the way to disposal. If you are on top of a water tower, now you have to deal with moving the previously mentioned drum(s) of solution on and off the tower. Additionally, you have to dispose of it. It is not like you can flush it down a drain. As a Haz. Materiel, you have to dispose of it properly. This can get expensive and involve a lot of paperwork. If done incorrectly, you now face fines from OSHA, EPA, Dept of Enviornment, etc. Also, depending on your state, you might need a HAZMAT endosement on your drivers license to transport. On a second note, a water tower is considered a confined space. If you have seen a hatch on a H2O tower, you know they are not big. This means you will need some type of tripod/extraction devise to get a unresponsive diver in full gear out of the tower. Additionally, now you have to consider how you get this same diver off the tower in the event they are incapacitated.