Summary

Inflow & infiltration (I&I) is a serious challenge to water and wastewater infrastructure owners, who usually don’t know they have an I&I problem until it’s too late. What is I&I? What does it cost? How do you stop it? How does controlling I&I fit into a holistic asset management and maintenance program? Jeremy Sukola and David Dingler of Prime Resins, a division of Carboline, explain. Spoiler: magic in a cup.

Want to schedule a demo? Contact Prime Resins here, or Carboline here.

Timestamps

Click to follow along with the transcript:

• 0:00 – Introduction
• 03:23 – Defining I&I
• 05:49 – It doesn’t only afflict aging infrastructure
• 08:39 – Calculating the cost of I&I
• 12:12 – Proactive or reactive? Some owners can only triage
• 13:46 – Where Prime Resins fits in
• 16:44 – Owners need to update master specs, and we can help
• 23:14 – Building up the contractor pool with demos and education
• 26:40 – The four questions

Transcript

Intro

Toby Wall: It's happening right below your feet, it's costing us all many millions of dollars a year, and there hasn't been a truly comprehensive way to fix it until now. I'm Toby Wall and welcome back to The Red Bucket Podcast. We're covering a challenge facing water and wastewater owners and operators, which is a serious challenge, but maybe one that's not necessarily well understood.

And so between the two of them, our guests today will help us untangle inflow and infiltration and present a rather compelling solution to it. Jeremy Sukola returns to The Red Bucket with a nice new job title, and we will get to that in just a moment. He's here with David Dingler, who is Southeast Regional Manager for Prime Resins.

David, maybe you can go first. Introduce yourself and tell us how you got where you are.

David Dingler: Hey, yeah, my name's David Dingler and um, yeah, I kind of actually got into this industry by fluke. I was actually in the appliance world from 2005 to 2009, and I knew somebody that was in the appliance world and during the recession got into one of the sister companies of Prime Resins at the time and called me up and said, "Hey, we're looking for a young guy that would like to learn about polyurethanes." And the only thing I could think of at the time was foam in a can. So me as a 24-year-old kid coming up, I thought I was going to go work in a factory and make foam in a can. And fast forward close to 15 years later, and I guess I'm considered in air quotations, an industry expert.

Toby: You are now because you're on The Red Bucket.

David: Yeah, yeah.

Toby: Great. Well, Jeremy, welcome back to The Red Bucket. What's been going on with you lately?

Jeremy Sukola: So, June 1, I took over the role of Vice President of Prime Resins. Part of that entails strategy and growth for Prime Resins, and part of that is geared towards relearning a lot about the industry that I've, I've been involved with for a little over 20 years now. And I do want to say, I've also kept my old job, so I've decided to do two things here. I'm continuing with my function as market manager for water and wastewater for Carboline, as well as Prime Resins is a Carboline company. So, I'm pulling double duty.

Toby: Gotta wear more than one hat, that's the rule these days.

Jeremy: That's right.

Toby: You mentioned Prime Resins as a Carboline company, so for the benefit of anybody listening who doesn't know this, Prime Resins is an RPM International acquisition from a few years ago and then aligned under the Carboline brand about a year ago, I want to say, if that's correct.

David: I believe a year ago, exactly this month.

Toby: Happy anniversary.

Jeremy: Yahoo!

Toby: If there's any two people who we would ask if they have anything smart to say about controlling inflow and infiltration, it's probably you two. And so I'm wondering if we can start by just describing what it is.

Defining I&I

David: Infiltration refers to groundwater essentially that seeps into sewer systems, sewer pipes, through holes, cracks, could be joint failures, faulty connections, mismanaged or misaligned items being installed. Inflow is typically storm water that quickly flows into sewers via roof drains, downspouts, foundation drains, some storm drains, cross connections, and other through hole man covers and whatnot. So that's kind of the big difference when you hear the technical term I&I.

Toby: What are the results of it happening? If you can just give us a, a rundown of what someone might expect to see in these assets or in water, wastewater infrastructure.

Jeremy: When you see the results of I&I in these structures, you'll see some settlement of the structures themselves. The structures can, can shift because a lot of times what will happen as I&I wreaks its havoc on these structures is it will carry away soils. And so it destabilizes the structure. So you you'll often see, if you see a manhole in the road with a big depression around the manhole ring, a lot of times that's settlement of the concrete or the asphalt above, because of the soils moving away caused by that inflow of storm water rushing down through either the manhole lid or from the ring and cover and then , again, you'll see whether it's in a manhole, whether it's in a pipe or a connection, here in Atlanta just a few weeks ago. We had some major water main breaks and what happened as a result of the continued and prolonged erosion of the soils around it, when the water main actually broke, it exposed the huge depressions that were in the road. And then obviously the force of the main itself breaking caused it to create a massive sinkhole. So, that's typically what you'll see. Usually the result of I&I are not really seen until it's too late.

David: Until it's too late. Absolutely.

Toby: Is it fair to say it's happening more often as infrastructure ages around the United States?

Jeremy: Yes, absolutely.

David: Absolutely.

It doesn’t only afflict aging infrastructure

Jeremy: Yeah. It's from aged infrastructure. If you think about, for instance, let's, let's talk about just manholes for a second. If you look at older manholes that some, you know, are 50, 60, a hundred plus years old, many of these are made out of brick and, you know, the mortar joints in between the brick, service lines put into these manholes. And you have constant infiltration into these, obviously that's a result of, you know, an aged asset, but we also have newer assets, newer manholes, pump stations, service lines put into force main or into, uh, main lines, that maybe the connections weren't done correctly.

David: Maybe gaskets were left out and installed improperly. Lots of variables.

Jeremy: The cause can be from, you know, the aged infrastructure. But we also see it in new structures as well.

Toby: I think that adds a layer, I guess, of complexity that I hadn't quite considered. Not to speak ill of anybody conducting work on these assets, but it is true that human error can play a role in creating these problems. And it's not just merely, you know, a piece of infrastructure is old and crumbling. It could be perfectly fine, just a mistake.

David: Absolutely. Yeah. People have deadlines. They, I mean, there's an influx of population coming into all these major cities. Construction's booming. So, human error is a large factor as well to consider.

Toby: You bring up population growth encroachment and these infrastructure systems that are built, you know, maybe 15, 20, 25 years ago and there wasn't really the foresight for, in some of these communities, especially in what we call the Sunbelt, I guess, in the U. S., where it's just a matter of growth outpacing infrastructure's ability to cope with it. And that's another thing I hadn't considered as a potential cause for some of these issues.

Jeremy: Yeah, it actually, it goes both ways, Toby. When you have an area that the uh, population booms pretty quickly, it's hard for the infrastructure to keep up with it. So, and to David's point, when you're having to build and there's tight timelines and you know, we're, we're really trying to support the population with added infrastructure that causes issues. Conversely, we've got areas that used to have population where maybe the population has dropped. Or if we look at rural areas that don't have the rate-paying base that some of the larger areas do. A lot of the money that's typically used for maintenance for these systems just doesn't exist. So you see it in both rural areas, in areas where the population is declining and in, in the population and the areas where the population is increasing. So it, it truly is systematic.

Toby: Are there any ways this has been quantified, I don't know whether it's a, it's a dollar sign or, or what it is, the unit of measurement, but is there a good way to describe or define the scale of, of I&I?

Calculating the cost of I&I

David: Yeah, I'll give just kind of an average. If you base off one manhole that's leaking an average of about five gallons a minute, if you break this down over to a yearly treatment cost, this groundwater that's getting into the sanitary sewer lines that has to be treated, the average currently is about $3.50 per 1, 000 gallons to treat this. So if you do the math, just for one manhole leaking an average of five gallons a minute, uh, just for using round numbers, you're roughly going to be around 2.6 million gallons a year. And with that treatments cost, you're looking at a little over just for one manhole, a little over $9, 000 to treat this one leak. And just kind of give you an average for a small municipality. They have an average of about 600 manholes. So say if 10% of those manholes leaked it's pretty easy to do the math from there.

Toby: I guess a way to characterize it differently is nine grand per year per manhole of value that has evaporated. That could either be put toward other projects in the system, or it could be, I find this hard to believe it would actually happen, but returned to ratepayers in some form or fashion.

David: Absolutely.

Jeremy: They're having to retreat this water, whether it be, you know, from heavy rain events presenting itself as inflow or if it's through these leaks within our system as infiltration. They work them, they work themselves down to that treatment plant and the operator has nothing to do but treat that water. And so typically what that results in is higher rates. Um, especially if that means that a municipality or a city has to, increase the size of their treatment plant. This, this comes at , a cost of tens of millions of dollars to the city or the municipality, and that's typically passed on to the rate payers to pay that. So we are all financially paying for the costs of I&I, for sure.

Toby: I was, as we're all talking about this, what came to mind to ask either of you is if we, if, if you can point to specific cases that stood out to you of just intense examples or instructive examples of I&I and, didn't this just happen in Jackson, down in Mississippi a couple years ago.

Jeremy: Absolutely. It did. I think as we're recording this podcast, we're seeing a storm move through Mexico, heading towards Texas right now. And you look at a place like Texas that we've talked about booming population. It's going to tax those systems. Um, and it's going to, it's going to create havoc. So we're seeing events like this all the time, because again, we're, we're dealing with an aged infrastructure system, especially when it comes to water and wastewater collection systems and our treatment plants. So, it was inevitable. We would reach a point where small events like this are going to create big issues and ultimately it comes down to, again, it's all about the economics of it. So this is going to create huge economical impacts for the cities, the municipalities, and the ratepayers that have to, again, bear the cost of this.

Toby: How good are those stakeholders at recognizing the challenge of I&I or recognizing if and when they have some sort of I&I event?

Proactive or reactive? Some owners can only triage

David: Honestly, some are better than the others. Being here from Georgia I know a lot of local municipalities that take more of a proactive approach. O one municipality that's close to our headquarters here in Conyers, they actually have some third party monitoring systems that stay in on top of it. So after a rain event, they could literally track down to where these points are located. But that's, you know, more of these areas that are going back towards the, booming population. These are these areas that are growing at an exponential rate. So I see them actually taking a more proactive approach to get out to more of these rural areas. And then you kind of get to the point where it's like, oh, well, we kind of address it when it, when something fails, unfortunately.

Jeremy: Yeah, it's more triage when your maintenance dollars are stretched. And I would say probably the last 10 or 15 years, you see more of a trend to David's point to be more proactive about identifying this because many system owners are identifying how important it is to control I&I. I mean, water is a resource for us and they understand the importance of, you know, protecting that resource, but capital is also a resource, right? So they look at it that way too, is, it's a, really a way to protect their, again, their CapEx and their maintenance dollars by tightening the systems up.

Toby: So let's pursue that. Tightening these systems up. I think that's a good, shorthand to talk about and, maybe David you can give us the summary of Prime Resins. Where does this fit?

Where Prime Resins fits in

David: So typically we come into the approach when that I&I is actually found and where Prime Resins can go in, our Prime Resins contractors in our network, they can go in as an economical method, using our materials, there's little to no excavation needed to do this. A lot of the traditional methods were, say, if you had a leaking joint in a manhole, you would have to tear out and replace that or either dig down and patch it from the outside. With our injection resins, we're able to go in and the contractors can actually inject through wall, typically, through the structure, and inject to seal on the positive side of the leak. So in between the soil layer that's bringing in the groundwater and the structure itself. So, um, not, not in all cases, but in most cases, this is a fairly fast process to where a contractor can get in and out, sometimes in a couple hours, sometimes in a couple of days, compared to days or sometimes weeks of downtime, lane closures. So return to service is up quickly compared to traditional tear out and replace methods or tear out and patch methods.

Toby: Prime Resins rolls under the Carboline umbrella last year. David, you said it was exactly a year ago. This is the one year anniversary, June. And it creates something that is pretty new in the industry. S so explain what happened.

Jeremy: Now that Prime Resins falls under Carboline, what that does is it, it offers us to provide to our customers a pretty unique story, right? So if a contractor previously had a project, let's say, you know, a manhole or a pump station, maybe traditionally would have gone to one manufacturer for his, uh, for his coatings and went to another manufacturer maybe for his resurfacing or repair mortars, and then gone to another manufacturer for solutions for leak sealing or leak stopping. Even if he went to one company that was able to outsource those three things to other companies. , the difference here is that this is actually all under one roof. So, Prime Resins is part of the Carboline family. So, we can go to a contractor now and say, "Hey, listen, we've got specialists for coatings that can help you determine what type of coating that you should use here. And we also have now a specialist for leak sealing, water stopping, controlling I&I." So we can do all of that under one roof. Um, and it really provides that benefit to the contractor where if an issue arises. For the owner, if an issue arises, as opposed to, you know, two or three companies pointing fingers at each other. It’s a family affair over here. So, Prime Resins and Carboline are together. We can offer leak sealing solutions, resurfacing products, and high performance coatings all under one roof here.

Owners need to update master specs, and we can help

Toby: I had a conversation this morning with one of our colleagues who's noticed something that can get in the way of that efficiency is in some municipalities, master specifications, not really detailing the I&I portion of system maintenance. And so, someone who's trying to make a decision, whether that's a, you know, forward looking maintenance decision or something has happened, there's an emergency and they need to act quickly, they might not know really what to do because there isn't any clarity in some of the documents they would look to for guidance. Is that something either of you have noticed as well?

Jeremy: Yeah, I'd say it's pretty common. Wouldn't you agree?

David: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Jeremy: In the scope of work for coatings projects, for instance, sometimes you, you don't even see a solution for leak sealing called out at all. Sometimes it will just have a sentence or two that says that, uh, you know, it's incumbent upon the contractor to stop all active water before they continue.

David: With no real method of explaining how to do so.

Jeremy: Absolutely, and that puts the contractor at a major disadvantage because all contractors out there are trying to sharpen their pencil as much as they possibly can to be efficient and make a profit and stay in business. And so if you're on a project where you get walloped with an additional $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 worth of work that you have to foot the bill for yourself, that can be hard to swallow. So, just like on the coating side, we feel it's extremely important to work with the specifier on the front end to really explain the need for identifying a portion of their specification to, to spell out what to do in the situation. Call out product types, call out companies, call out approaches, um, with, within the specification of how you control active water. Because really it, in the end, all it does is add extra cost and delay the project when a contractor has to deal with that on their own. Because, they're rightfully so going to want to look at the owner or the specifier and say, "Hey, this was not included in our scope and we've got to address this." So that typically just adds additional unforeseen costs and delays for the project.

Toby: It sounds like two sides of the same coin where on one end you want clarity so that you can get the work done and so that the people doing the work are clear on what they must do and everybody's sort of aligned on what they're accountable for, what they're responsible for. But then there's also the, I don't know, due diligence side of it, or the fiduciary to introduce a different industry's term.

Jeremy: When you're working on a project, there should be no surprises. And, and, you know, the one thing that holds true on a project is there's always surprises. So being prepared for that is important. Things are going to arise on a project, but these typically are not unforeseens. These are something that we see almost on every single project where we have active water that we have to deal with when we're talking about subterranean concrete infrastructure, water intrusion is, is present in most of these projects. So, it's something that we typically discuss and to be completely honest with you, when I was the engineering guy here for Carboline, when we would talk about this previously, it's something that we would bring up it really in generalities. Like, hey, we're here to talk about, you know, corrosion control on these structures. And, oh, by the way, you really should think about, you know, controlling water. It wasn't really until the realignment of Prime Resins underneath Carboline where it was really something to point out to everybody here that, hey, we, we really have a great solution here that we ca talk about. And it's, it's extremely important, um, for several reasons. Controlling water, obviously to keep the owner from having to retreat it and, and, and bear that extra cost. But also you can't continue with a coating project until you can control the water. Because if you try to cheat that, that's a surefire way to have a coating failure. So, it's extremely important to point that out to the specifier and help guide them through the pitfalls of avoiding that.

Toby: Uh, and you bring up a good point about a coating failure, if you're the asset owner or you're the applicator or you're the, you're the manufacturer, everybody's really eager to know exactly what happened so that they can say it wasn't them. And so it feels to me like this is one of those ways where there's a whole lot of stress involved when something fails in service. You can sidestep it. Here's a way to sidestep it.

David: Yeah, being under one roof. Yes, absolutely.

Jeremy: Yeah, when we can offer a little bit of extra protection with this type of technology in house, I think it, it really, it makes the contractor and the specifier or owner feel more confident that we're covering all the bases here. Because nobody cares about coatings until there's a coating failure. And at least on the coating side, you know, controlling water is a big part of that. So we're all very risk averse over here. We want to give a solution that's going to last and it's going to work. So we're in the same boat as the owner and the specifier and the contractor are. We don't want to see anything fail. So anything that we can do to ensure that, that's what we're going to do. And controlling active water is part of that.

Toby: We have a comprehensive solution that involves separate technologies, but it's all working toward good maintenance, high performance of systems. I'm wondering if you can say more about how you help contractors who might have previously been siloed, where you have the contractors mainly responsible for leak sealing, repair, resurfacing side of things, and you have contractors who primarily are experienced in coating, and they are not always, the Venn diagram there does not always overlap. And here now we have a, from the manufacturer's side, a solution that does overlap. It'd be nice to have contractor bases, which also overlap. What does it take to create that?

Building up the contractor pool with demos and education

Jeremy: Really, it's about us educating our contractors. Just like them, you know, we're always looking for new avenues of business and, and contractors are doing the same. So, where historically, you may have had a painting contractor who didn't work on concrete, you've seen a lot of those contractors move over towards the concrete side, because in water and wastewater, that makes up a majority of the surface area. Well, we're also starting to see that additional business added on where, hey, not only can we repair surface to concrete and recoat it, we can also help control active water by adding this on as a service. So, we take our contractors, we introduce them to the Prime solutions, Prime Resins works with their contractors, introduces them to coating solutions.

David: So it works vice versa, both ways.

Jeremy: Absolutely. So you are, you are seeing that overlap now. Contractors are becoming more savvy when it comes to working in the structures, uh, and being able to take a full system approach.

David: And me being on the sales side, absolutely. I mean, Jeremy's actually worked hand in hand with me even before he took his new title with Prime, helping me out with, uh, personal contractors that did leak remediation and now they're out coating, resurfacing, doing it all. I was actually, working out doing a demo down with our South Florida Carboline rep earlier this week, and I was showing up a presentation and pulled up a slide showing the the polyurethane system in action. And I looked at the guys and said, “You're about to watch magic.” So I did a, what we do, called a cup sample. And I mixed some of our PrimeFlex 920 that actually expands in a free rise state 29 times its liquid volume. So I mixed up the small amount of resin inside of a 16 ounce cup, and it's now expanded to 30 ounces of expanded foam. And there's all these grown men in the audience that are looking out like little kids watching a magic show. It, it always, I've done hundreds, if not thousands of these cup samples and of course I'm a little numb to it, but when somebody sees it for the first time, it actually gets, it's pretty funny.

Toby: If you are one of those adult-aged people who want to relive your childhood and that kind of excitement, you can schedule a demo with either Carboline or Prime so Jeremy and David, how does somebody do that?

David: Oh, as simple as reaching out to either carboline.com or primeresins.com, or our contact information will be readily available to anybody as well.

Jeremy: Yeah, we spent a lot of time at the industry conferences as well. You can connect with Carboline at state water shows. You can connect with Carboline at, you know, like David said, through our website, Prime Resins through our website. Any of the underground construction shows, Carboline and Prime Resins are both pretty active in industry events. You go to any of these shows, you can connect with us there. You can go through our websites. We've got great contact forms internally. We can put you in contact with someone near you. And, come out and show you one of David's magic cup tricks.

Toby: “David's magic cup tricks” might be a podcast episode title. We'll see if we get that one approved by management.

David: Exactly. I'm not wearing the hat though.

Toby: If we ever, if we ever did Red Bucket merchandise, I am thinking a t-shirt now. “David's magic cup trick.”

The four questions

Toby: So, we've got past the serious part. I think we should get through the fun part, which is the four very important questions that we want to make sure our audience hears answered and I've themed them a little bit so that they're local. And so I'm ready for some drama here, guys, who does the best pizza in Atlanta?

David: And it's funny because Jeremy and I were arguing about this before the podcast. I picked a small chain, lots of locations in the Southeast, but I said Mellow Mushroom and Jeremy had some...

Jeremy: Yeah, I'm not going to get some Mellow Mushroom, I've eaten many Mellow Mushroom pizzas. But I'm going to say there's a place here in Atlanta called Fellini's Pizza. They've got a few locations, but the Fellini's down on Ponce, Ponce de Leon Avenue in downtown Atlanta, I'm going to say is, I would walk there right now for a slice.

Toby: How much did they pay you to say that?

Jeremy: Yeah. Use a hashtag Carboline, hashtag Prime Resins for your 15 percent off coupon at any Fellini's.

Toby: All right. Most fun sports team in Atlanta right now.

David: Well, this one has to be, it's not a Atlanta team, but the Savannah Bananas. That's probably the most fun in sports, I would say at the moment.

Jeremy: Absolutely. I would say, I would say most fun in sports nationally, not just in Georgia or around Atlanta. Everybody knows the MLB. NFL, NBA teams, but the Savannah Bananas, if you're on any type of social media, you've seen videos of them and it's fantastic. It's great.

Toby: If you're not on social and don't know, the Savannah Bananas are a minor league baseball team.

David: They keep it exciting.

Jeremy: It's pretty crazy what happens there.

Toby: And I won't explain anything more about what they do, I think anyone who's not familiar should just look it up, go to YouTube or something and you will find.

David: You'll get stuck in a rabbit hole watching videos of them.

Toby: And there's, there's way worse rabbit holes in the world to get sucked into. So if, if you spend four hours, you know, instead of sleeping on a school night or something, watching Savannah Bananas, like, that's pretty wholesome. You're fine.

David: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Toby: I'd love to know what either of you, uh, watch as a guilty pleasure TV show.

David: When I'm actually at the house, when I get off work, I have this playing in the background, just as background noise, but The Office. It's funny how a 20-plus-year-old TV show can resonate so much with people now these days. So that, that would be mine.

Jeremy: Yeah, I've got a couple. I went through the Breaking Bad series, and now I am binge watching Better Call Saul. So I'm about halfway through the first season now, which is a great show. If I'm looking to do something like David's talking about and just have something on the TV when I'm at home, as long as the kids aren't around, it's usuall It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I can watch that for a good 24 hours straight.

Toby: All right. And finally, and anyone who's in St. Louis will maybe get a giggle out of this question because everybody in St. Louis knows how they would answer it. I have a feeling the same might be true for you two down in metro Atlanta, but, do you consider yourself better at driving or worse at driving than the average driver?

David: Better, of course.

Jeremy: Better, hands down, hands down. It's a free-for-all here in Metro Atlanta, so when you get behind the wheel, you better be a skilled, practiced driver or Atlanta will eat you alive. So, I would say that we probably grow our drivers a little different here. A little bit, yeah.

David: Absolutely. Very aggressive.

Jeremy: Yes, defensive, we'll call it defensive.

Toby: When I say we would chuckle here in St. Louis about how we would answer the question, everybody here thinks that they're really great drivers. Very few of them are any good at all. It's very entertaining to me to see, you know, really what a clown show it is here.

Jeremy: Well, in Atlanta, I would say, like most things, you just get in there and you figure it out. And that's what we do here. You just jump behind the wheel, start her up, and figure it out.

David: Turn signals in Atlanta are optional.

Toby: Turn signals, stop lights, license plates, it doesn't matter really. Just, just be safe. So on, on that chaotic note, I think we should end it here. Gentlemen, thank you very, very much for joining us on The Red Bucket. This was a great conversation.

David: Toby, thank you so much for the invite.

Jeremy: Yeah. Thank you, Toby. It was great catching up.