Austeck’s No-Dig Down Under focus

Trenchless Australasia spoke with Austeck managing director Tristan Day about the company’s stand and its experience at No-Dig Down Under 2023.

Austeck had five different pieces of equipment on display at its 2023 stand. “We’ve had a good combination of products here from a few different manufacturers at different price points,” Day said.

“Because of the different specifications and performance capabilities, it’s proven to be successful at the show.

“We had more leads in the first two hours on the first day, than we did at the whole show last year.”

One product on display was Troglotech’s crawler system, with a few new modules.

Day said Austeck has represented Troglotech for around 20 years and built a solid relationship with them.

“The crawler system has been around for a few years, but the latest innovation is the lift arm, wheel extension and cable drum, and that’s been very popular,” he said.

Another piece was the Rausch full high definition (FHD) system, which provides sewer inspection data in FHD during both push and crawler operations.

“We’ve had a terrific response for the full HD,” Day said.

“Full HD is the next generation of camera equipment, and the industry is definitely heading in that direction.”

Acoustic blockage assessment was also on display, which gives users a pipe score on how clear the pipe is.

“Called the SL-Rat, which stands for Sewer Line – Rapid Assessment Tool, it comprises of a transmitter and a receiver that are placed above the upstream and downstream manholes and then over the course of three minutes, it sends down sixteen tonal pulses at different frequencies, and then it gives you a score of how clear the pipe is,” Day said.

A zero score means the pipe is completely blocked, while a 10 means it is completely clear.

“Since it takes place so quickly, it gives you the ability to prioritise where to deploy other more time consuming technologies in a fraction of the time at a fraction of the cost,” he said.

“Seventy per cent of all survey work is done on good pipe and pipe you’re not really interested in because it’s functioning normally.

“You want to be looking at the 30 per cent that isn’t functioning as it should be, and that’s what this product establishes.”

With a range of different products across different applications, Austeck focuses on providing total solutions with cutting edge technology and ongoing consultancy from inspection, analysis, and evaluation to training, support and repair.

“It’s all very synergistic and it all works pretty well together,” Day said.

“Occasionally, we have customers that buy multiple systems across different ranges that we do, but normally they’ll be specific to one particular product.”