During race days, when water demand is at its highest, Cheltenham Racecourse experienced loss of pressure and some buildings had limited water supply. The water provider would not offer the service of increasing pressure in the water network in the area, so what could the racecourse do to enable the site to have enough water over the duration of a festival?
Keltek was engaged to undertake various investigations including; a flow and pressure test on the water main, the size of the incoming main and explore the local infrastructure. In addition, Keltek extended the scope of works to provide a solution to ensure continuous supply of potable and firefighting water to the site.
Keltek deployed water pressure loggers to monitor the pressures and identify any water mains at the racecourse that required upgrading to eliminate the flow and pressure issues. Keltek found that the local network was very poor, so did not provide the site with the size of connections that it required. The water issues were not due to lack of pressure, rather a lack of capability of feeding the booster pumps with enough water. Therefore, Keltek recommended that increasing the volume of flow of both incoming supplies and linking the feeds, would provide enough water on site to alleviate stresses on the network and enough water would be supplied. The works were programmed in two phases, one before the Gold Cup weekend and one after the Gold Cup weekend 2018.
“Keltek was able to change our water system to enable us to have the supply we needed to facilitate key race days throughout the year.” – Tim Partridge – Regional Buildings & Maintenance Co-Ordinator