Sunderland Royal Hospital experienced a major water mains leak under its one way road system where the volume of water being lost was so severe that Northumbrian Water had received multiple customer reports about low pressure from an adjoining housing estate.

We know how important it is that hospital appointments aren’t cancelled and theatres are kept open. And in this case the leak was so severe it was also becoming a danger to road users.

Our team arrived on site at 8am and once they pinpointed the leak, we started to excavate. Paul Leach, Pipeline Solutions Manager, said: “When the team uncovered the area of cracked pipe work they realised that a full excavation to repair the water main at that point might have caused the pipe work to fully burst leaving the hospital without water. With operations scheduled throughout the day we knew this wasn’t an option.”

Total Water Solutions’ team stayed on site all day to monitor the leak meaning we were on hand should the water main totally fail before we could perform a full leak repair. After all planned critical care had finished for the day we fully excavated and repaired the water main. Our team was on site until 2am the next morning. We returned the following day to permanently reinstate the affected area.

David Ferguson, Engineer, from Sunderland Royal Hospital said:

“We picked Total Water Solutions because of its solid reputation. I knew how reliable they were and had used them previously but never been faced with an emergency situation such as this before.

“Thanks to their professionalism and experience, the road collapse risk was negotiated, pressure and flow returned to normal on the nearby housing estate, a large amount of water was saved, but most importantly our patients weren’t affected because our operating theatres were kept open and no hospital appointments were cancelled.”