A little over two years ago, the staff of the City of Concord faced a predicament: should they continue to use a system that was increasingly unreliable, couldn’t fit in 60 percent of their pipes, and was becoming more and more expensive to repair — or should they cut their losses and invest in another system?

“Our inspection needs kept growing and our old system could never keep up,” says Jim Stearns, camera operator at the City of Concord. “When Pete Carlson of Haaker Equipment started demonstrating the ROVVER X, it was as if it was made for our sewer system.”

Nestled in the San Francisco Bay Area, Concord is less than 31 square miles, with over 550 miles of sewer pipe ranging from 6 inches to 36 inches in diameter.

“Over 300 miles of pipe in our system is 6 inch, but our old system just couldn’t operate in it. The crawler had too many exposed wires and therefore was constantly under repair, couldn’t steer in our pipes and was just getting too expensive to operate.”

Pete Carlson of Haaker Equipment helped the city retrofit its existing truck with a new ROVVER X system from Envirosight.

With the ROVVER X, Concord’s sewer inspection crew can field-reterminate their cable and perform other routine maintenance. “The ROVVER X is so much easier to service — there are fewer wires and it is a better engineered product overall. Of the three systems we've owned, this one is in a class of its own for ease of use, cost of operation and reliability,” says Stearns. “Above all, if there is an issue or if we need preventive maintenance, Haaker Equipment’s authorized mobile service truck comes out and does whatever is needed — on site.”

Today, the Concord crew inspects about 2,000 feet of sewer pipe per day. “We’ve driven our ROVVER X over 350 miles in the last 2.5 years. The system is smaller, lighter and more reliable than our previous system,” says Stearns. “Our routine repair costs are only 25 percent of what they were — the system is paying for itself in productivity and efficiency.

“We run our crawler every day of the work week and it's normal for us to go months at a time without the slightest problem — which is amazing given the harsh environment it operates in, and the fact that with our previous system we crossed our fingers every morning that we could make it through an entire day problem-free. We couldn’t be happier with our decision to cut our losses and purchase a new ROVVER X sewer inspection camera.”

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