Industrial Leak Repair

The word repair carries a different definition in Industrial Maintenance. In the construction industry, if a repair is being made, there’s a regulatory process to follow and certain things must be accomplished before the repair can be made. An actual leak repair is more of a construction activity.

For us, it means suppressing the leak so that you can maintain pressure and operation. It’s often called leak containment, and a leak containment device (LCD) is either custom engineered or straight out of the truck that successfully suppresses the leak.

The way leaks are suppressed today is just several generations of leak repair innovation.

Once upon a time, leak repair meant putting wooden pegs in wooden ship floors to stop water from overtaking the ship.

A little more recently, the steam engine was invented, where a loss of pressure meant a loss of effectiveness. This steam engine would be the start of the industrial modern society.

As the industrial revolution continued, the need to suppress leaks to continue operation was essential. New and better ways of repairing leaks were constantly developed.

Back in 1994, leak repair – as it is defined today, was still less common.

Rubber hoses were tied around leaks, and wooden pegs and sheet metal were all used before sophisticated methods were developed.

One common method was a sheet metal insulator – build a sheet metal box around a leak and try to fill it with epoxy or resin to mitigate the leak.

Luckily, things have gotten much more advanced over here in 2020.

Over the last 5 or 10 years, regulatory bodies have put their own processes and controls in place to put a box around how the industry does leak repair.

It’s always evolving.

When you’re faced with a leak, you want to get it patched up ASAP to mitigate safety hazards and prevent loss of your product.

We’ve seen a number of methods, from off-the-shelf tapes or composite products, to a Do-It-Yourself stopgap.

There is some success, but rarely is it 100%.

So you might focus on diverting the leak to mitigate the safety risk, which is great. But you’re still losing product.

The thing is, competency on leak repair isn’t so different from welding. Like previously mentioned, there’s over 40 competencies.

And once you’ve applied the DIY solution, it’ll be more complex for the contractor to come in and fix it. It’s not possible to remove previous attempts since they don’t know what’s underneath, so the new solution will be more involved.

Obviously for safety reasons, a temporary fix may be necessary.

But if you can, give your leak repair contractor a call first.

You’ll save money by having it done right the first time, rather than them having to work around a DIY fix.

Installing an enclosure to contain leaks is something anyone can be trained to do.

But it’s the awareness of the surrounding hazards that go into it that makes experience valuable.

Some time ago, we received a poor safety rating on a customer satisfaction survey from a client regarding our work on a leak repair.

We faced a bit of shock, since safety is always on the top of the priority list. It’s always focus number one.

So we investigated. If we performed unsafely, you bet we will be taking steps to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

And funny enough…

They were very impressed with the work that was done.

The crew never performed in an unsafe manner – the client felt the nature of the leak repair itself was unsafe!

Sometimes you have high pressure steam. Sometimes you have chemicals leaking. Sometimes you have fire hazards.

Repairing a leak is the easy part.

Having awareness of the potential hazards though, is something that requires more than a 3 day training course.