Africa-Press – South-Africa. Rand Water completed its 58-hour planned maintenance on Friday afternoon, but warned that there might be some further delays in water flow as a result of airlocks which developed in the pipelines during the maintenance process.
An airlock is a pocket of air in a pipeline that prevents water flow.
This usually happens when bubbles gather in the pipeline.
In a statement on Saturday, Rand Water said several reservoirs had run empty and would take several days to be fully restored.
“Due to the system [having] been empty for close to three days, it is bound to have airlocks,” it said.
“To mitigate this matter, the system may require to be momentarily decommissioned to release [the] airlock that assembled during the maintenance process.”
There was a need for it to “decommission certain pipelines to release air in the system”.
This intervention would ensure that the newly restored pipelines were not damaged by the airlocks, Rand Water said.
“It is also important to mention that Rand Water pipelines are under extreme pressure and for that reason, consumers are warned to avoid areas that are close to what appear to be leaking pipelines.”
News24 previously reported that it could take as long as two weeks for the water to flow freely through Johannesburg residents’ taps again.
“When power comes back after a power failure, one can hit a switch, and the light comes back almost immediately. Water, on the other hand, is supplied through a long series of pipelines,” the entity said after residents took to social media to complain.
During the outage, Rand Water said it had conducted several projects to ensure it would have the capacity for the future needs of the municipalities it supplies.
The bulk water supplier takes water from the Integrated Vaal River System, purifies it, and distributes it to its reservoirs. Municipalities then draw water from these reservoirs to supply residents and businesses.
The shutdown began at 19:00 on Tuesday.
Johannesburg was the most affected by the outage, which hit Soweto, Laanglagte, Southdale, Randburg, Roodepoort, Orange Farm, Ennerdale, Johannesburg South, the CBD, and surrounding areas.
By Thursday evening, many areas had no water, especially those supplied by the Eikenhof Booster Station.
The booster stations are pumps that push water from Rand Water into the municipal reticulation.
On Friday afternoon, the entity said repairs which were supposed to be completed at 05:00 that morning, had finally been completed.
It reported the return of water in Rosebank, Dunkeld West, Oakdene, Kenilworth, and parts of Soweto.
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