Determination of leakage inside buildings with a roof tank

Abstract

Buildings with a roof tank are common in countries with intermittent water supply. For these buildings, it is difficult to determine the leaks inside with the methods developed for pressurised networks of drinking water. A proposed alternative is Continuous Automatic Tank Gauging. Although commonly used to check the tightness of gasoline storage tanks, this method still has not been used to determine water leaks. This study explains how to set up the method and shows its application to six buildings. As expected, the leak magnitude was found to increase with the size and age of buildings. In practice, the method can estimate (within ± 30%) a leak as small as 1 l/h in buildings with a small roof tank and 20 l/h in buildings with a large roof tank.

Keywords:

• drinking water
• intermittent water supply
• domestic leakage
• Continuous ATG
• submersible pressure transducer

Acknowledgments

Any reference to a commercial model and its manufacturer is for product identification purposes only, and does not represent an endorsement of the product. Thank you to Prof. Bruce E. Hansen for making the software available for conducting the statistical tests described in his 1992 publication ( www.ssc.wisc.edu/∼bhansen/ [Accessed 26 October 2011]), and to Pilar Guerrero for her great help.