Stan Roberts & Associates Helps a Texas City Locate Water System

Stan Roberts & Associates, a Copperhead rep firm, assisted a large city in Texas locate their previously unlocatable services and mainline by installing ground rods and access points at all tracer wire dead ends.

Troubleshooting an unlocatable tracer wire system.

A Texas city water department reached out to Stan Roberts when they were struggling to locate their services and parts of their water main. A sales representative from Stan Roberts & Associates visited the city to help troubleshoot. When the sales rep arrived, he noticed that all tracer wire was day-lighted at hydrants and curb stops but not properly terminated with access points and ground rods. He knew what was wrong right away.

The solution to an unlocatable tracer wire system.

The rep explained that in order to locate tracer wire, a complete electrical circuit is needed. To create a complete circuit, the signal needs to be pulled down the tracer wire with ground rods and travel back to the transmitter via ground. Tracer wire needs to be grounded at all dead ends. To demonstrate, he grabbed a shovel and a ground rod, walked to the end of the target line, dug a hole about 20”-24” deep, pounded in the ground rod, spliced the ground rod lead wire to the end of the tracer wire, connected his transmitter to the head of the target line, and located the line.

Easy detection for the future

With a properly grounded system using Copperhead ground rods, all the mainline and services were accurately located. The city liked the results so much that they will be implementing Copperhead’s Complete Utility Locating System™ Specification on all future projects to ensure accurate detection and will be installing Cobra™ Access Points and Ground Rods on their existing systems as well.

About Stan Roberts & Associates:

Stan Roberts & Associates is a distributor representative for the waterworks, plumbing and irrigation industry. They have been serving their customers and communities in Texas and surrounding states for nearly 50 years. A family owned and operated company whose motto is, “Service with competitive prices equals good business.”