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THIWASCO: These are the reasons you missed water for a week.

Some of the systems upgrade and maintenance works undertaken by THIWASCO  that caused water supply shut down for 48 hours.
Thika water and Sewerage Company (THIWASCO) has come out to explain why residents of Thika Town and its environs had to bear a week-long of dry taps. They have, in the same vein, apologised to all its customers for any inconvenienced caused due to the lack of water for the said period.

In a statement to the public, the water firm said that they shut down water supply to the area on Tuesday 6th of June, 2017 so as to allow systems upgrade and maintenance works to be undertaken. 

They said that this was geared towards improving system efficiency and allow better services to their clients.

Among the work undertaken included;-

~ Upgrading the pipework to the old tanks at the treatment works to allow balancing of water flow and enable continuous pumping of treated water.

~ Replacing old mechanical bulk metres with electromagnetic metres to enable better monitoring of the system.

~ Replacement of filter media to reinstate throughput to design capacity.

~ Replacing the air valves along the rising main with anti-surge and anti-shock valves so as to reduce water hammer that damages pump.

The statement went to say that even though the work was originally scheduled to be completed within 24 hours, it took the engineers 48 hours to be through with the whole exercise.

“We kept updating our customers on the progress through social media platforms and also through adverts in the Daily Nation newspaper,” read the statement.

(Related story: Brace for dry taps tomorrow as THIWASCO announces shutdown.)

The water provider added that due to the extended period taken to complete the whole exercise, most pipe network and individual household storage tanks were completely drained. This resulted to the reinstated supply of water taking several days to have the entire system pressurised.

“Due to the pipe network emptying, air gets in and when water flow is reinstated, it creates what is referred to as ‘air locks’. The air locks normally prevent water flow and they take some time to trace and remove them. This explains why water could not reach all customers immediately after supply was reinstated,” said the statement by THIWASCO Management.

THIWASCO continued by saying that their staff worked continuously hard to ensure that the system stabilised.

“We are glad to inform you that from Tuesday 13th June 2017, the system has completely stabilised with all areas receiving water. Subsequently, we would like to reassure our customers that normal water supply as per our previous rationing programme will now continue,” said THIWASCO.

Thika residents have had a very long and painful week with dry taps, having planned to be without the precious commodity for one as advised by THIWASCO then. There has been a lot of hue and dry all over with most people having to go without a bath for days, the most affected being residents from Ngoingwa and Makongeni areas who had to go for most of this period without any sign of water draining from their taps.


However, water has started streaming back in their households and it’s now a matter of time before normal water pressure resumes.

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