Product Spotlight - December 2020

Product Spotlight - December 2020

Data collection on critical assets like valves and hydrants can be a time-consuming task when field crews are recording by hand, but technological advancements have increased the efficiency of this work significantly over the past few years.

Exercising valves in a water distribution system is a vital part of ensuring their health and long-term function, and is best done on a routine basis. In the past, field workers recording and storing data on numerous valves in large systems did it by by hand. The ValveSTAR Data Collection System was designed by Hurco Technologies to take the burden of data collection off your field crew, allowing them to focus on exercising valves in a time-efficient and accurate manner.

Hurco’s Infrastructure Management System Mobile software powers the ValveSTAR and utilizes a full version of Windows software for fast and detailed collection and reporting. Data collected is fully exportable, providing detailed reports to manage water distribution systems, and it can also be configured for fire flow testing, unidirectional flushing, C-factor testing and hydraulic modeling.

With ValveSTAR, users can track critical information such as applied peak torque, revolution number at peak torque, number of revolutions required to open and close a hydrant or valve and GPS coordinates.

IMS Mobile clearly displays information for torque, revolution count, revolution speed, number of cycles and can also be used to test data live. Torque can be recorded continuously throughout the exercising activity or users have the option of recording peak torque and the revolution in which it occurred. Torque alarms will alert users when the preset torque has been met, and the exerciser will stop and return to the fully open position automatically to help prevent damage to the valve or hydrant.

ValveSTAR works using an integrated GPS system with 900 MHz of wireless communication. An optional ValveSTAR Auto is available for hands-free valve exercising, but manual controls remain in case of emergency situations. Operators can simply select a valve and calibrate torque and speed, then start the exercise from the comfort of their vehicle or a location up to 100 feet away.

Not only does using software eliminate manual recording time, allowing more valves or hydrants per day, it also eliminates the risk of human error by automatically keeping a detailed log of all valve and hydrant exercising activities that can be downloaded to any commonly available spreadsheet or database application. 800-888-1436;  www.hurcotech.com.



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