Residents of Dunkeld and Hyde Park who have been struggling with regular water outages from 8pm were relieved last week after the mystery water shut-offs stopped following extensive investigations by Joburg Water.
Ward 90 councillor Martin Williams said residents became increasingly frustrated when their water went off at 8pm each day, with no explanation for the outage.
Williams reported that Joburg Water contacted him stating that they had traced the problem back to the bulk supply Pressure Reducing Valve (PRV) in West Street, Houghton Estate.
“A couple of years ago, Joburg Water installed a controller on this PRV to reduce nighttime pressure into the entire Parktown 2 reservoir zone. It seems that this controller malfunctioned and started to reduce pressure from 8pm,” said Williams.
Joburg Water further explained to Williams that they had now disconnected the controller from the PRV to enable it to operate on a fixed reduced pressure, which means that it produces the same pressure during the day and night. Joburg Water stated that this action would now allow the manufacturers of the controller to investigate and repair the problem before they reinstalled it.
Williams said, “I was contacted by many long-suffering residents [on 13 and 14 August] who were delighted that the mystery 8pm shut-offs had come to an end. I am very grateful to Joburg Water for the extensive investigations which led to the resolution of this problem.”
Williams added that this problem had affected residents as far as Parkmore. “As you can see, steps taken many kilometres away can affect water supply in different suburbs,” he concluded.
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