Tri-StateDiving.com

Tri-State Diving was contracted by Environmental Fabrics located in Gaston SC, to find leaks in a large in ground tank at Fosston MN. Our crew of four divers worked in the tank for six days trying to find the leak. The tank was about 185 feet long by 85 feet wide. It was divided in half by a curtain and the walls are cement down to about 8 feet and a liner the rest of the way down to 20 feet. The system is designed to decompose peelings from potatoes and carrots from a dehydration plant and turn it into methane and then that is pumped back to the plant to be used to boil the water for the boiler for the plant. The first two days the crew used a dye around all fittings and pipes to see if there was any movement of water. The second two days were spent using a special probe that was brought in by a firm from Texas to try and find the leaks. The last two days were spent cutting pipes inside the tank and doing pressure test on the pipes. Because of the amount of leak points not one was giving enough movement to make the dye work and the areas that were leaking would not work with the probe because the probe does not work around metal. All the pipe pressure testing turned out negative so we were unable to locate the leaks. The tank had to be drained down and then the leaks were found. Visibility in the upper layer of the tank was good but in the bottom of the tank where there was silt the visibility was about 6 inches and the water temp was about 39 degrees.